I doubt it. On a given day in EQ, I group with people from England, Germany, and the far east (Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore.) Proximity to the server has very little impact on how the game runs. Given that WoW is newer and better than EQ, I’d be surprised if it was any different.
I am currently beta testing EverQuest II and all I can tell you without violating the NDA is OMG! 
How is WoW as far as soloing/grouping is concerned? I read a thread on their forums about recent patches making it harder to solo, but they also said it was very easy to solo before the patches. This is kind of a hot-button issue for me with MMORPGs because most of the time I can’t play all day long, and I have to go AFK periodically. I like grouping, but I can’t most of the time. If it tells you anything, I unsubscribed to FF XI after only two weeks. I liked the ability to solo in Asheron’s Call, but I could probably deal with a game that was a little less solo friendly than that if I had to. So what were the impressions of those that were in the stress test?
Although I had some of my favorite game moments when I was in a large group, I spent the vast majority of my playtime soloing. It means you go after lower-level quests, but there are a huge number of such quests, so that’s not really a problem.
I have heard that it’ll be extremely difficult to complete elite quests (the ones set in instance dungeons, I believe) while soloing: the monsters there tend to be extremely tough.
However, when I needed to party up with people, there were usually other people around that were willing to join up on an ad hoc basis: I probably partied with a dozen or two different people over the course of the game, most for less than fifteen minutes, just long enough to complete one specific quest.
Daniel
From the way you’ve described it, it sounds like it should be very good. I noticed on the game’s site, the devs said they were specifically keeping it fun for the casual player. That’s promising. Looks like I’ll be checking it out when the retail is released. Thanks!
Dude! That looks awesome! It’s like NWN made into an MMORPG, but without those pesky monthly fees!
Do I have to download something? The requirements said something about the CEP hak pak needed…the Hell is that? I don’t see a place there to download it, so where do I get it?
I wish them luck at this. That seems to be every new game’s goal, but then the power gamers show up and make changes necessary. That’s not a knock on power gamers. It’s just the way things have worked so far with MMORPGs. Btw, I’m probably a hard core casual gamer or a want-a-be power gamer without enough time and with too many commitments to pull it off.
I’ve played EQ, AC, DAoC, SWG, and CoH. To me, the most casual by far was CoH. I could be killing (arresting) bad guys in less than a minute after logging in. Try that in some of the others. That said, EQ is the only one that has held my attention for more than 3 months or so. CoH was fun, but it didn’t seem to have enough depth to keep me going for long.
I saw WoW last week at a friend’s house. The graphics looked nice, but cartoonie. It sort of reminded me of the original EQ graphics, but with a much higher polygon count. I’m not saying that as a good or bad thing, just an observation. I didn’t see enough of game play to form an opinion. I just know I’ll be checking it out. I think this will be the first game to actually take a really big chunk away from EQ’s player base.
I’m also looking forward to EQ 2. The shots I’ve seen look spectacular. I just hope the game play matches.
This is something that confuses me: why would the game designers change things on behalf of the power gamers? As a casual gamer, I hope the power gamers have fun, and I don’t begrudge them reaching level bajillion within the first week; I just want to make sure they don’t have fun at my expense. I’m a little unclear how they could, excepting things like griefing.
Daniel
Well, I know that oneof the ways WoW helps out the casual gamer is by implementing a system where the more you don’t play it, the more XP you get.
Well…not quite like thet, but theyhave a system whereby the longer you go between login sessions, the longer you have a period of time where you get double XP for everything. I don’t know exactly what the rate is, but as just an example, a day of not playing would give you an hour of double XP, wheras half a day f not palying would give you half an hour. I think there is an upper limit to the length of time double XP can last, but it’s a nice system that lets casual gamers still level at a decent rate, and encourages power games to take a break once in a while to sleep/eat/drink water so they don’t die (FTR, there are a few documented cases of people dying while playing online games because they didn’t take a break to do any of those things.)
The power gamers chew through content. They take advantage of whatever they can. Again, this is not a knock. It’s taking things to the extreme that makes the games fun for them. The thing is, say they hit max level after two weeks (like happened in CoH). So, the developer then decides that the game is too easy and tunes (nerfs) certain aspects. This trickles down and in turn hurts the casual gamers because the game now requires a less casual approach to make progress. It’s actually a double blow to the casual gamers, because the power gamers usually already have their levels or l33t item of uberness by the time the nerfs come down, so only the casual gamers feel the sting. If the developers don’t retune for the power gamers, the power gamers eventually do things like solo raid level (40-60 person) encounters (see Lord Nagafen in EQ for an example) or pharm entire dungeons where casual players could be hunting, etc.
Sometimes the things the power gamers do are exploits or cheats and sometimes they are not. Although a power gamer might be a cheater, there are definitely many power gamers who don’t cheat. They just find the optimum ways to gain levels, platinum, influence, whatever. As far as the outright cheaters, they should be banned and the account deleted, but they are usually just given a slap on the wrist.
It’s not hopeless. There are things that help. The instanced maps are great. LDoN (expansion with instanced dungeons) was a godsend for EQ. WoW’s quest system sounds nice as does the xp system that bouv just mentioned. The thing is, expect the power gamers to find a way to use it that wasn’t expected and in the end gets it changed.
I believe it works something like this:
- At the bottom of your screen is an XP progress bar, divided into 20 sections. Each section represents 5% of the XP you’ll need in order to progress to the next level.
- Whenever you are in an inn, or whenever you log out in a city or an inn, a “rested” timer starts going. For every eight hours that the timer is going, you get one “section” of experience (i.e., 5%) that you’ll earn at double normal rate.
- This timer maxes out, I believe, at 80 hours, at which point you’ll earn 10 sections (or 50% of the experience to your next level) at double normal rate.
In other words, say I log out at 12 midnight sharp, and log back in at 8 am sharp. At my current level, it takes 10,000 XP to get to the next level; that means each of the little sections on my XP bar equals 500 XP. With me?
I’ll get a little marker on my XP bar, exactly 500 away from the point I’m at. Until my XP bar has reached that marker, every time I earn an XP, I’ll also earn a bonus XP. If I kill a creature worth 83 XP, I’ll also get 83 bonus XP, for a total of 166 XP.
If I’m 40 XP away from that marker, and I kill a creature worth 83 XP, then I’ll only get 40 bonus XP, for a total of 123 XP.
Does that make sense?
The idea, I think, is not so much to allow you to catch up with hardcore players: there’s no way a casual player can do that. Instead, it’s to let you catch up with your nerdier friends, who might play just a little bit more than you do.
I don’t know if it’s the world’s best system, but it seems to work pretty well.
Daniel
Okay, I can definitely see a problem if they’re pharming entire dungeons. However, the instanced dungeons should take care of that at mid-to-higher levels (the first instanced dungeon I saw was when I was level 14, and it kicked my butt till I was level 17 in a maximum-sized party), and if they’re farming the much lower-level areas, where they get 0 XP for killing the creatures, I’d think that would constitute griefing and get them punished.
As for solo raiding–why do I care if they do this? What effect does it have on me if they’re off killing God at level 30? AFAIK, the game is sort of a Sartrean Hell in which nothing ever changes: anyone killed just comes back after 5 minutes; any quest you go on, the quest giver gives the same quest to someone else 30 seconds later. If they kill God, that’ll only be a dead God on their heads; I can still have God for myself. (Note that the game doesn’t have God in it).
That’s what I don’t get. I’m not a powergamer, but I have no objection to their enjoying themselves. But if Blizzard makes the game harder in response to them, that’s what would negatively impact my own enjoyment.
They’ve intimated on their boards that they’re not going to be tweaking the game to make it harder for everyone in response to powergamers; I am optimistic.
(I should also say that I’ve been a Blizzard fanboy ever since the first Warcraft game, and have pretty much total faith in their ability to get things right).
As for the graphics, yeah, they’ve definitely got a cartoony feel to them. That’s been part of the Warcraft aesthetic since the first game; you either like it or don’t :).
Daniel
This depends. In WoW will they still get items from these creatures? In some MMORPGs you do, in others you don’t. If you do, then the only way it would really be griefing is if you are stealing kills from other players. Kill stealing opens a whole other can of worms. :smack:
Keep in mind I’m just commenting on MMORPGs in general and I know very little about WoW that I haven’t read here. Say it’s 9 months after a MMORPG’s release. You and your guild (or whatever the game calls it’s player association) finally decide to kill a boss that spawns once every 3 days. However, you can never find the boss alive because a few power gamers kill it within minutes of it spawning. Maybe instancing will keep this from being a problem? I just know it’s been a problem with MMORPGs in the past.
It’s neither good nor bad to me, just an observation. It keeps with Warcraft’s style. Cartoonie or not, the polygon count seems to be there.
I’m right there with you. I would really like to find another game that captures me the same way EQ did. Blizzard has a great track record. Let’s hope it carries over to MMORPGs.
My two favorites are Kingdom of Loathing and Progress Quest. Check 'em out!
Interesting; I don’t know about this. That may be solved by the fact that higher-level folks won’t really want the stuff that low-level monsters carry. For example, low-level monsters are going to carry linen cloths, which you can use to make into bandages; get a little higher level, and the monsters start carrying wool cloths, which you can make into far superior bandages. Once you’ve been making wool bandages for five levels, it’d be pretty counterproductive to go back to the weaker version.
Hmm. Near as I can tell, the respawn rates are far faster: although I didn’t get even a third of the way to the level cap, I can say that I never had to wait longer than ten minutes (and usually more like three or four minutes) for someone to respawn. That, coupled with the instancing of dungeons, ought to help–especially since the toughest monsters seem to be in instances, which may lead to powergamers camping out there instead of in public areas.
Stonebow, should we take this to a new thread? I’m realizing that we (and mainly I) have been hijacking this one pretty thoroughly.
Daniel
I say a new thread. Not only are you hijacking the original thread, but the hijack itself is a fascinating subject and it’ll be fun to discuss.
First off, you need NWN + the two expansions Shadows of Unrentide and Hordes of the Underdark. Then install the Community Expansion Pack from here:
CEP
You pretty much need all the expansions + CEP for any mods out there now. The CEP added creatures, new armours, cloaks and new placeables etc.
If you have the expansions and want to try it out, let me know and I’ll try and be there for when you log. I’m a player and a DM on the mod so I’d be happy to show you around.
We have 2 servers in UK, 2 in US, 2 in Hungary and one in Norway… tends to be a more mature bunch of players that like to have fun. DM’s heavily discourage assholes.
You can take it to a new thread if you like- mostly because I think you’d get more input on it…I’ve pretty much gotten what i wanted out of this thread- there seem to be a lot fewer options out there than I’d first imagined for good online games.
I’m a fan of the Warcraft series, so I might give WoW a try…I’m not totally against subscription fees, but I don’t want to buy a pig in a poke. I’m also likely to purchase City of Heroes, just because I’ve heard so much about it.
I’m a casual gamer, so the idea of just being able to log in, kill some stuff, and go, is a big sell for me.
Right now, I’m working on Conquer Online, and that’s fun, though there is a lot less selection for character classes, etc.
My Lady wife has already played Progress Quest and is in the middle of Kingdom of Loathing. She enjoys both, but i wanted something a bit more serious.