So how do the two compare?
Has anyone played both?
Which has the most real estate to explore? The best community? The friendliest players? The most cool stuff to do? The best economy?
I haven’t played EQII but I’m appalled at the community in World of Warcraft. I started playing EQI at launch and those were some of the friendliest people I’ve ever encountered on the internet. People were constantly out to make new friends or help other people with questions, help them find stuff, help kill things, or even help out with money or items.
A typical exchange on WoW so far goes like this:
-Walk up to a person and bow, dance, say “Hi”, “sup”, “Hail”, “How’s it goin’?”, “Wanna group?”, or any of a hundred other greetings I’ve tried.
-Said person turns around and walks away
It alternates between being so absurd it’s funny and just plain annoying as hell.
I kept running into one guy over and over and trying to talk to him and he never answered so I finally invited him to group out of pure stubborn persistence. He joined and, without saying a word, we killed about 10 Snow Leopards. After that he ran off and wouldn’t respond to my /tells or groupchat and about 20 minutes later he dropped the group.
And I’m chiming in as someone who is playing EQII (I’m not sure what I’m doing here now. I think I got lost. I’ll be logging back into EQII shortly).
It is very friendly - everyone is willing to help others out. As with anything, you get the random jerk, but they’re few and far between. EQII is an enormous jump from EQI, and I cannot believe how much fun I’m having. I never thought they could make a game more addictive than EQI, but I was so very wrong. So many old problems have been fixed, so many fantastic new ideas implemented. I am beyond impressed.
Sorry I can’t contribute to compare both sides. I’m interesting in hearing some opinions from people who are playing them both. I’ve got my hands full with EQII and occasionally City of Heroes - I can’t afford to take on another game!
I thought EQ2 was much friendlier than WOW also. I can relate to you Cisco about other players. People don’t even ask if you want to group, they will just randomly invite you and drop with no explanation. Currently playing WOW because it seems to be a little more fun starting out than in EQ2. In the long run I think EQ2 will be the game with more viability and the game everyone will stick to in the long run. WOW is fun, but it doesn’t seem to have alot of long term appeal to it. Leveling is just too fast. I like a grind like in EQ1. It made you damn proud when you finished a hell level.
Give WoW a little time to calm down. It’s just out of the gate and a lot of people are too busy discovering the game and levelling to spend time exchanging emotes with a stranger.
I’m playing EQII and I’m enjoying myself so far. I’ve met a few jerks and lots of really nice people.
Having played the beginning levels of both so far, I must say that WoW wins for game content and EQII for community. Those being the two main areas of importance, I call it a draw.
EQII basically holds your hand through the first few levels with some very fun quests and then it felt like I just got… dropped. All I could see ahead of me was a looooong walk of killing critters for the next level without a real point. One game perk I loved was heroic opportunities, but otherwise the combat just wasn’t interesting enough in and of itself.
WoW basically overwhelms you with point. You’re not out there killing plainstriders for your next level. You’re out there taking care of the creatures harassing the caravan route to the Crossroads. Sound shallow? It doesn’t feel so.
So, between the two I’m finding WarCraft more fun. I can always find myself a friendly community (a guild). Others can always create a point for EQII. It just hinges on your priorities.
Well, on my server we have good /general conversations going on, people will ask for locations of something, or help killing something, or getting a group together and much fun happens. I have the paperwork to start a guild already, just waiting for the last 4 people to get their game copys and get signed up [or get into the game at the same time and in a close proximity=)] I know that a number of people have added me to friends lists, and i have people on my friends list that I didnt know from eq1…and i keep hearing people saying that they left eq2 and have started WoW…
It might be on a server-by-server basis…
What server are you playing on? My experience (as noted above) has been identical on Mal’Ganis, Bloody Hollow, Ice [Cloud?], Thunder Lord, and one other server whose name I can’t remember. I thought this was a wide enough sampling to judge the rest of the servers from.
How do the international audiences compare in these two games? Blizzard is huge in Korea, and I understand there are already a lot of Korean players in the game*, even though it hasn’t (?) yet been released there. A lot of non-responsiveness and seemingly bizarre behavior might be due to the fact that the player on the other end doesn’t speak a word of English, and can’t understand anything you’re saying, or most of the interface.
If this tehory holds water, it would also mean that it’s more likely you’d see this behavior on Pacific servers than Eastern servers, as that time zone is closer to Korea’s.
[sub]Full disclosure: I got this information from a very racist rant against Asians posted on the General chat channel in the Hyjal server. Considering the highly questionable conclusions he was drawing, I would not be at all surprised to learn that his premises were likewise faulty.[/sub]
I’m on Frostwolf, one of the west coast PvP servers, and although this is my first MMORPG experience, I’m enjoying WoW a lot. I trusted Blizzard to create a good game and support it well.
Now, as for friendliness, I don’t chat with too many people in game. I’m usually running from one quest to another and I don’t have much to say to people in towns or inns. I do know that as I’m running down the road to where ever, I get buffed by spelled cast by people that I’m passing and I try to return the favor. That’s friendly enough for me. The only time I end up chatting is when we’re building a party and waiting for someone.
I got severely buffed yesterday evening when those dastardly Horde ran a raid into Alliance territory… 30 Alliance hunting down 5 Horde invaders, serious fun, although I only got one fireball off before they were dead or had run. 
Macros, lvl 17 mage on Frostwolf.
It could be that the person didn’t even see your words. I found the chat log to be easily ignored and overlooked, and though I try to answer people when they direct a question at me, I’m sure I’ve ignored some people accidentally. I wish Blizzard would put chat in dialog bubbles over your character’s head (with the option to disable them if you don’t like them).
DeadlyAccurate, aka Sylesand, Medivh server, level 13 night elf
I confess I’m not much of a chatter, either, not in real life and definitely not in the game. If someone came up to me out of the blue and started a conversation about nothing, I’d be kind of annoyed with them, and would get out of it pretty quickly. I’m there to play a game, not to engage in a glorified chat protocol. If I’m on the move from one location to another, I may not pause to respond to their chat if it doesn’t seem important.
However, if (for example) I’m fishing, and someone comes up to me and says, “Hi, are you catching anything good?” then I’ll certainly talk with them: fishing doesn’t require much attention, and they’ve given me something to talk about, so I’ve got the time and the inclination to talk. I join my class chat channel (druid) and encourage other druids to do so, and happily talk about our quests, our strategies, and so forth. I joined a guild in beta and did my best to help out members of the guild.
WoW has enough gameplay that the focus is on the game, not on other players; this is a deliberate decision on Blizzard’s part. (I forget the exact quote, but at some point they said something like that they were designing a theme park, not a playing field–they want players to spend lots of time interacting with the world they designed). Not having played any other MMORPGs except for MUSHes during the early nineties, I wasn’t really expecting much in the way of community, so I’ve not been disappointed in that aspect.
That said, Cisco, have you tried out a roleplaying server? It might be more to your tastes.
Daniel
I played EQ 2 for the first two weeks after launch. It’s not a bad game. They have a lot of things right. If you are into trade skills, this may be your game. However, you are pretty much forced to group and interact in the community. Some quests simply cannot be completed solo. Your tradeskills after level 10 will also rely on other players as you can’t make all of the components. I’m certainly not anti-grouping, but the forced dependence really wore on me.
I loaded up WoW last Friday night. It didn’t grab me then, but I had fun over the weekend. So far, there is less reliance on others, but I’ve still found a few times when help was nice. No problem, just ask someone else nearby if they want to help. I was worried about the idiots, but it hasn’t been terrible. I did pick a RP PvE server, so I’m probably not getting some of the asshats you would have to deal with on a PvP server (not that there are good PvPers too).
EQ2’s launch seemed smoother. They had issues on the second night with many servers going down, but since then it’s been good. WoW has had bad lag issues on and off since launch from what I’ve read. I didn’t have any Friday or Saturday, but I got some last night that caused one death.
EQ2 does have one issue in that it allows for dark elf rangers. I can’t believe how many people I saw running around named Drizzt, Drizzzt, Dryzt, etc. Yes, you’re cool. Now go play a different game. 
Regarding unasked for group invites. This is kind of like spam or junk mail to me. I didn’t ask for it. If you ask me if I want to group or ask for help, I probably will. If you ask me and I don’t answer, assume I didn’t see the invite, but that I don’t want it anyway. If I don’t join you after the first invite, there is no need to send me 8 or 10 more like one idiot did on Saturday.
Oh yeah, EQ2 has better graphics. WoW’s aren’t bad, but they are cartoon-like. Naturally, this means that EQ2 has higher system requirements.
As far as the OP’s question, I think it’s mostly going to depend on your play style. Personally, I wouldn’t be at all shocked if I’m back playing EQ1 by the end of the year.
I’ve never had a problem with anyone in WOW. (except one guy who thought he could follow me and steal my kills. As you can’t steal kills or loot in WOW, I ignored him and he went away)
BTW, I’m on Mountain time servers, so maybe that’s why. I don’t know.
EQ2 isn’t available on Mac so that put it out of contention early. You don’t support my platform, you don’t get picked. Simple.
Simply put WoW is a differently oriented game. You don’t NEED ‘community’ so most folks opt out of it unless they need a group to do a really hard quest (like one of the many instance quests later on). In the early levels its quite possible to clear a zone of quests without ever grouping at all, especially if you zone hope and always stick with green or yellow quests only (I jump between Dwarf, Human and NE lands all the time to level up only doing the easier quests).
So, because one doesn’t HAVE to group (and in fact can get as good or better exp by NOT grouping, especially in the early or non-instance quests) there really isn’t a deep sense of ‘community’. I tend to like this actually as it allows me to play at my own (or my guilds) rate. I can see where this would be a turn off to folks who like to randomly chat with people or meet new friends.
However, give it some time. Later on it will become essential to group for the more difficult quests like VC…and these quests are pretty epic, taking a group several hours to finish off. I guarentee there will be lots of oppurtunities to chat people up in such groups as its essential people talk to coordinate things…or the group will wipe.
Sorry, I have no input on EQ2…I played the first one up through level 55 and found the game boring mostly. Certainly as the game forced people to group you had a lot more chatting, but endlessly (and to my mind pointlessly) camping a dungeon to wack an endless succession of mobs just to level up or get ‘kewl lewt’ just doesn’t do it for me beyond a certain point…even if the conversations were more interesting (because the content was more boring IMO :)).
DaoC is another game I played, and the PvE was pretty much the same thing…it FORCED you to play in groups, and to endlessly and monotonously wack mobs over and over with the sole goal to get stuff or level up. So of course the conversations were more interesting as folks were bored and had to do SOMETHING. The PvP was a lot more terse though because you had to concentrate…or you got zerged and wiped and had to wait for a teleport back.
IMO if you like to chat and have interesting conversations then EQ or DaoC is for you (again, I haven’t played EQ II so I have nothing to say about that)…if you like gaming content and fun in the game itself then you can’t really do better than WoW. Again, just MHO.
-XT
I never understand this as being a pro or a con of a MMORPG. It’s at the heart of all of them if you want to maximize your leveling. It’s simply more efficient to stay in one spot than wasting time traveling.
I do like how both EQ2 and WoW have a lot of kill x quests. They get you to new areas and the quest experience helps defray the loss of experience that you get from running back to town for the quests. I would rather do these kill quests than grind in one spot, but there is nothing stopping me from traveling from zone to zone killing a variety of things in EQ1 or CoH either.
I am currently playing both games and will probably drop one once I decide.
First and off topic…I really wish these games would do the City of Heroes style of creating zones for individual players/groups when entering a ‘dungeon’ type area. The constant respawning of enemies whenever you move (or don’t move) gets old. Once an area is cleared out it should stay that way (unless a patrol comes in) something which COH does.
Anyways…
WoW vs EQ2…so far I like EQ2 better but haven’t been playing very long.
-WoW seems better combat orientated and more fun…but not by a large amount. EQ2 combat is almost as fun IMO.
-EQ2 seems to have better resource gathering and crafting. The building things in EQ2 is great!
-Money seems harder to get and more important in EQ2. I am constantly hugely short of money and want so much I can’t have. This is a good thing In WoW, money seems to be irrelevant.
-EQ2 people seem to like to group more. In WoW I gave up my priest (priest/defender types are my favorite type to play). I had to give it up because NO-ONE would group. I would stand outside a ‘dungeon’ and solicite…people would decline go in and die. Some would even get pissed off at me because I would stand there and watch them die and yell at me about why I would heal them. I would respond “you declined my invitation, so you obviously didn’t need my help”. Healer/defender w/o a group is not as much fun…so if no-one groups why play it? I started playing as a warrior instead.
-WoW has PvP, though I haven’t tried it. I like PvP and so will stick around until I experience it. I intentionally joined a server favored by larger PvP groups so that I could join one of them. If PvP is good, then WoW will stay on my hard drive.
- Both games need to fix their chat. separate windows for chatting and messages.
Bottom line - I look forward to when I can play EQ2. Not so much WoW but hoping PvP saves it for me.
Camping isn’t at the heart of WoW…at least not persistant camping. Certainly you have to ‘camp’ to get mob boss X if its part of the quest you are on. However, having wacked it you move on to something else.
Certainly you CAN simply camp in WoW (and I know people who actually used too camp things like the SM instance to get items), but the game revolved around the quests.
Personally I see the emphasis of the older MMORG in leveling for levelings sake as a major downer because it becomes mind numbing to simply kill the same mobs over and over again as they spawn. As you said, nothing prevents you from going someplace else to wack some other mobs…except that its more efficient to sit down near a camp of mobs that will give you and your group the exps and stuff you want and wack away.
If EQ II has quests all the way to the highest levels and emphasis’s them then I wouldn’t have anything bad to say about it. I love the WoW quest system and the fact that I can jump on and do some quests when I want too, then leave and come back later to do somemore. And I love the fact that in WoW quests are ALL I have to do to level up and get good stuff.
-XT
In WoW you can drag one of the windows away from the other.
Irrelevant? You can’t level your skills without craploads of silver. A mount (40th level) costs 100 gold. The most money I’ve seen in one place at one time is 81 silver. Money is important and they’ve tried to avoid a massively overinflated economy (a la EQ1) by putting in dedicated money sinks.