WoW v Everquest - What's the amazing difference supposed to be?

[Merneith]

So is there anything fundamentally different in execution about WoW? Something that EQ2 simply hasn’t put into the game at all?

A long and complicated series of quests about poop?

I don’t really know where EQ2 stands at the moment. Do they have achievements yet? They have player housing and that’s something I do miss a lot in WoW.

WoW has guns and explosives and hand grenades. I like it but I know some people prefer a more purist pre-technological approach.

Murlocs > Frogloks

I seem to recall WoW having more and better holidays - not just real world but Azeroth centric stuff like Brewfest and Summer Fire Festival. But that’s been an evolving thing.

The quests in Lich King seem to be moving toward a more heavily scripted story based stuff and less “bring ten bear asses”. But that’s sort of relative. Don’t know where EQ2 stands on that.

Oh, does EQ2 have quests where you torture people? Lich King has a couple. The only one I’ve done has been the Death Knight one which was oogy but narratively relevant. It’s a coin flip whether this counts as a pro or con.

Wow doesn’t always take itself as seriously. Again, coin flip - people seem to either like or not. This is part of what people have said about liking the graphics even though they’re sort of cartoony (I agree with this, and also about WoW’s superior animation, fwiw) and how the graphics really work with the silliness.

Overall though, Blizzard games are known less for doing something new and more for doing it better. They tend to build and polish and streamline into a game that’s highly playable and easily accessible. They have a kind of genius for it. That’s what Cisco meant about Blizzard loving gamers, I think. SoE is not so high on ease of use in their games and it showed in EQ2 at least while I was there.

[Merneith]

Bonus: LotRO has Monster Play where players can play as spiders or wargs or goblins. WoW doesn’t but I wish it did.

[PopeJewish]

@Critical1

to be fair EQ 1 is in many many ways a vastly superior game to Wow. the faction system is so complex it boggles the mind to think it was ever implemented in any game let alone one so old.
the unbelievable freedom you had in EQ was also astounding, it was fun just to mess around with what you could do. one of my favorite things to do when bored was hit a city with my chanter, find all the charmable npc’s, charm them, shrink them down to super tiny size, then leave them that way. people would come into a human city and all the nps’s were about 2 feet tall. i loved hitting Kaldim the dwarf town after a patch with a pile of rusty weapons, give one to a guard to make him bag his shield, then pick his pockets clean of coins, gems, and his friggin shield. you had some insane freedoms in that game that may very well never exist in another game again.

Yea there were some great parts in EQ, and the community could be awesome, too. I remember turning my Druid into a giant tree just to hide a path from newbies (more experienced players had no problem just walking through the idiot druid, but you know, I got bored in that game sometimes!) and I remember we once had a wedding in my guild in Kelethin, the tree elf city. We got newbies drunk than had them race over the bridges for good items, cause if they fell they’d die (we’d rez them, of course). Hell I remember being a newbie and participating in such races. But some of those parties got so big GMs would show up and just summon loads of free booze for everyone, it was awesome.

[Oakminster]

I played EQ and EQ2 to end game raid levels. Also play CoH, with one toon at max level. WoW is my “main game”.

Boils down to WoW is infinitely more player friendly than EQ ever dreamed of being, and more than EQ2 was when I left that game. WoW has no camping for rare spawn mobs that you have to kill to finish a quest…WoW has every class able to solo effectively…WoW has in-game maps…WoW has “raids” that only require 10 people, vs 70 for EQ, and like 40 or so for EQ2. Much easier to put together. WoW crafting is quick, easy, and no-fail. EQ and EQ2 crafting was tedious, and a tiny mistake or bad luck could ruin your end product, and you’d lose costly materials.

For me, EQ jumped the shark after the Planes of Power expansion. Once they let you kill the very gods…it just got silly with raid bosses “tougher” than gods.

For EQ horror stories…remember the quest for your class “epic” weapon? My druid spent something like 19 consecutive hours sitting in one spot (that damn fish in LoIO), gaining no experience, just wiating for a rare spawn quest mob…that was one of about 30 steps I had to complete. Spent another 12 hours camping the Corrupted Brownie…which I learned after it finally spawned was too tough to solo. All together, spent prolly 100 hours real time to get my epic weapon.

For all that, I still have fond memories of EQ. I’ll sometimes announce in /trade in WoW something like “MGB Bot9 @ Nexus Stone in 5 Min”, and rarely fail to provoke a response like “Adding Symbol, can someone add KEI?”.

And I’ve never found a Druid class I liked better than in EQ. We were truly jack of all trades. We could heal (I didn’t often), we could DPS (this was me), we could solo (quad kite FTW), we had great buffs…and we could solo kill anything in the game that could be snared and did not summon.

[RickJay]

@Oakminster

For all that, I still have fond memories of EQ.

Absolutely. My wife and I would spend hours playing and had a fantastic time. Just the other day she mentioned how much she loved fighting in the Estate of Unrest. I was thrilled to play it.

But the game had its day, and WoW surpassed it. It just wasn’t easy to play. I still remember how some quests - of which there were not nearly enoguh - would require an exact, character-for-character /say to work. And some basic quests were broken from day one and never fixed. The game was, in retrospect, unbelievably unfriendly.

[DSYoungEsq]

@RickJay

Absolutely. My wife and I would spend hours playing and had a fantastic time. Just the other day she mentioned how much she loved fighting in the Estate of Unrest. I was thrilled to play it.

But the game had its day, and WoW surpassed it. It just wasn’t easy to play. I still remember how some quests - of which there were not nearly enoguh - would require an exact, character-for-character /say to work. And some basic quests were broken from day one and never fixed. The game was, in retrospect, unbelievably unfriendly.

Yes, Everquest (the original) was the game you had a love/hate relationship with. Loved the idea, loved many things about the game, but got really, really tired after a while of some of the defects.

Frankly, for my tastes, EQ2 solved most of those issues. I love player housing, I love the incredible graphics, and I love the fact you don’t zone every two minutes. I actually like the crafting system’s basic premise in EQ2, though what I dislike is that they never actually developed it to its full potential, relying instead on simply carbon-copying things as you went up intervals. If you are not into seemingly boring tasks, you shouldn’t be a crafter, yanno? And how much less boring is it, really, to punch the buttons for the same three spells over and over, monster after monster?

So it seems from what has been posted here so far that the main reason people play WoW is that they can “get into” the game more easily, as it were. Everything designed so that the main concept (fight and kill monsters, loot them, sell loot/complete quest, rinse and repeat) is right there, easy to do. I perceive that a two-hour session of WoW has more meat to it than the same session in EQ2, in most people’s estimation. People prefer this, and thus, the popularity.

So have I missed anything?

[CutterJohn]

@Oakminster

For EQ horror stories…remember the quest for your class “epic” weapon? My druid spent something like 19 consecutive hours sitting in one spot (that damn fish in LoIO), gaining no experience, just wiating for a rare spawn quest mob…that was one of about 30 steps I had to complete. Spent another 12 hours camping the Corrupted Brownie…which I learned after it finally spawned was too tough to solo. All together, spent prolly 100 hours real time to get my epic weapon.

I remember well… I was halfway to my epic for my shammy, but ended up not getting it since a clickable DoT was of dubious value… Nice of course, but nowhere near as handy as the water sprinkler, and the time investment was obscene.

People who started on WoW have no idea.
I do note that those epic quests are really the shining example of how awesome and how horrific EQ could be, at the same time.

On the one hand, you have this quest, with little information to go on, only slight clues, that involved a lot of time and patience. It took months for many of the classes to figure their quests out… It was a true community effort with lots of speculation. At no time did the game hold your hand and tell you where to go, and when you finally got this precious… Wow!

On the other hand… dozens or hundreds of hours, wracking your brains trying to find something, begging and pleading for people to help, sitting in sheer boredom for hours on end(hoping you were in the right spot for that rare spawn)… Ugh.

[Jayn_Newell]

@CutterJohn

At no time did the game hold your hand and tell you where to go, and when you finally got this precious… Wow!

That’s one thing I like about Blizzard’s philosophy–the hard part is meant to be the task itself, not figuring out what you need to do. AIUI, the hunter epic bow quest wasn’t particularly easy, but that was the point–it made you earn it by being a skilled player.

And yet we still have the idjits in Barren’s general asking “Where’s Mankrik’s wife?”

[wolfman]

EQ had a wierd design the more I think about it. They designed the game for grouping, not soloing. But then they made about half the classes bad for groups. They were working on some bizare notion of ‘fair’ for class balance, that just didn’t take fun into account.

EQ had a belief that everything had to be worked very hard for. The leveling was so much more difficult, and penalties so much more severe that looking back it’s hard to remember why I thought it was fun. It was a grind start to finish.

But the single biggest failing of EQ(or to look at it another way Triumph of WOW) was instanced dungeons.

Everybody I know eventually left EQ after one to many times cleaning a dungeon to have some damn nuker sneak in for the boss kill and the good loot. The fact that instanced dungeons are just sitting there pristine and virgin, until you and you friends come in can can beat it at your pace with no interference, is a whole world better.

[Bosstone]

@Jayn_Newell

That’s one thing I like about Blizzard’s philosophy–the hard part is meant to be the task itself, not figuring out what you need to do.

Exactly. Even with Questhelper telling me exactly where I need to go for a quest, it doesn’t make the game any easier, just less frustrating. All it’ll tell me, for example, is that the quilboars I need to hunt can be found in this area. I travel there, and that’s when the actual hunt begins.

That’s another thing about WoW that, so far as I can tell, is unique to it: it allows and encourages third-party addons. I suppose the drawback there is that folks can then design scriptbots to ‘play the game’ for them, but for me it just automates some of the more annoying tasks and streamlines the game so I can spend less time doing ‘work’ and more time having fun.

[Lady_of_the_Lake]

@DSYoungEsq

So it seems from what has been posted here so far that the main reason people play WoW is that they can “get into” the game more easily, as it were. Everything designed so that the main concept (fight and kill monsters, loot them, sell loot/complete quest, rinse and repeat) is right there, easy to do. I perceive that a two-hour session of WoW has more meat to it than the same session in EQ2, in most people’s estimation. People prefer this, and thus, the popularity.

So have I missed anything?

Imho, that’s not really all that Wow is about.

It’s so open ended that you can spend your time in any number of ways.

Sure, you can solo quests – kill/loot and that’s it – and heck, many of the higher quest lines are a whole lot of fun and very engaging! In this way, the lore is really evolving, as you level you become much more of a part of the fight against the scourge.

Or you can spend your time instancing and being a social player.

Or you can seriously raid and be one of those uber players that I envy.

Or Pvp the night away – the battlegrounds are not just for killing - you are working with others to defend your land and in return you get cool new equipment to play with.

And crafting is not to be taken lightly, you can make some pretty fun things – flying carpets, motorcycles, a metal chicken to fight by your side, a net that may or may not capture your target instead of you (yes, I’m an engineer).

Or you can do a little of everything, fish up a rare crock pet, take part in the seasonal fun with mistletoe and snowballs and pervy dancing gnomes, defend Silver moon from Allies who think that blood elf = weak ;), re-spec your character for fun and try to work out how to tank an instance for the first time before calling it a night.

Or just run around the world and become ‘Explorer your name here’.

The great thing is you can do all these things with one character (more so now with the class changes with WOTLK – even the healing classes have less of a disadvantage at solo) – so my vote for Wow is that you can play it however you want to play it.

Which explains is popularity.

[DSYoungEsq]

Yes, LotL, but you can do all those things in EQ2, also. Still, the main point to the game for most people is to do the same kill-loot-sell-buybetterstuff-repeat cycle that is the fundamental basis for both games.

[Merneith]

Well yeah - but when you put it that way, the kill-loot-sell-buybetterstuff-repeat cycle is also the fundamental basis for every rpg since Akalabeth. /shrug

[DSYoungEsq]

@Merneith

Well yeah - but when you put it that way, the kill-loot-sell-buybetterstuff-repeat cycle is also the fundamental basis for every rpg since Akalabeth. /shrug

And this is relevant to what’s been said how?

The issue isn’t what you do, it’s how you do it that makes the difference. So far, I’ve not seen that how you do it is that different, either, just faster and easier.

[Critical1]

@CutterJohn

I remember well… I was halfway to my epic for my shammy, but ended up not getting it since a clickable DoT was of dubious value… Nice of course, but nowhere near as handy as the water sprinkler, and the time investment was obscene.

actually the shaman epic was stupid easy, you could get the spear just by repeating the very first turn in over and over. with a dual account set up you could bore yourself to tears with a druid and your shaman port/gating endlessly til your faction was maxed out, then just one kill and the spear is yours.

one of the things about the game that did rock, on the other hand the monk epic with its average 110 LITERAL hour camp of raster or whatever his name was really was stupid obscene.

[Merneith]

And this is relevant to what’s been said how?

It’s relevant because you’re asking what the difference is between two games and then defining “the main point” of one of games in such basic terms as to be meaningless.

I’ve listed a whole bunch of individual things that are different in the two games and numerous people have chimed in with their consensus that one game is especially different in its user-friendliness and speed of play. That’s not a trivial difference. It stems from the basic approach to game design of the respective developers. One focused on making the game slow and difficult in order to draw out people’s subscriptions and let the veterans feel like they’d achieved something. The other focused on making the game fast and slick in order to make it inviting and let everyone feel like a superhero. That’s the ‘amazing difference’ you asked about.

WoW is designed to let even the newcomers dive right in and feel awesome. As a result it’s got vastly more newcomers - and also better long-term retention since they don’t have to nail their nuts to a tree to get anywhere. That’s a successful approach. That’s why everyone wants to be the ‘next WoW,’ not the ‘next Everquest.’

[Jolly_Roger]

@Merneith

I’ve listed a whole bunch of individual things that are different in the two games and numerous people have chimed in with their consensus that one game is especially different in its user-friendliness and speed of play. That’s not a trivial difference. It stems from the basic approach to game design of the respective developers. One focused on making the game slow and difficult in order to draw out people’s subscriptions and let the veterans feel like they’d achieved something.

I’ve never played Everquest. I had a disk for it long time ago, when I was relatively new to the internet. I loaded it but never got past putting my credit card info down in order to subscribe. I was wary of that, not knowing much about MMO’s at all back then. (Not that I know a lot now)
Sometimes I think WoW is set up to drag out a subscription. Thats probably a bit unfair to say, but I felt like a lot in the game was a big time sink when I had to literally run from Ironforge to Menethil Harbor. The fact that questgivers don’t actually give directions was frustrating to me. *(“Go see this guy in this place” is what a lot of it felt like. I don’t know where this place is…how do I get there?) *It was fortunate for me that when I started playing WoW a friend (and also amazingly my former First Segeant…its always funny the Top of your unit ride up to you in battle armor. He told me he had more Horde characters than Alliance and I can believe that)

It only occurred to me recently that the long travel times in WoW are good for many characters. You not only get to explore but you get the opportunity to gain xp and materials for crafting, which thanks to Bosstone and a few others for pointing it out to me, is how you can actually make gold to buy stuff.

The other focused on making the game fast and slick in order to make it inviting and let everyone feel like a superhero. That’s the ‘amazing difference’ you asked about.

By comparison **City of Heroes **had a problem with starting off when I first played it. Sure, it was great, but not easy for a newb. The map will indicate where to go to fight bad guys, but you don’t have a travel power at first and the first few levels you have to avoid some of the foes in Paragon City. A level 6 Vazihlok can be deadly to a level 3 blaster. They’ve pretty much taken care of that though with the ability to get a temp travel power through radio missions. **City of Villains **also has easier travel times. The biggest weakness IMO is that the missions starting off are always THE SAME. I got blasted in the CoX forums for daring to suggest that WoW had more variety in quests and maps. Its true, though…CoX has a limited amount of tiles. One building interior is pretty much what they all look like, etc. If the developers spent some time coming up with new maps it would go a long way.

WoW is designed to let even the newcomers dive right in and feel awesome. As a result it’s got vastly more newcomers - and also better long-term retention since they don’t have to nail their nuts to a tree to get anywhere. That’s a successful approach. That’s why everyone wants to be the ‘next WoW,’ not the ‘next Everquest.’

I think **Age of Conan **tried to take some of the pie with WoW but failed. The concepts were ok, but many people, myself included had incredible lag problems which made the game unplayable. The PVP system was broken in the way that there was no consequence for being a giant asshole. When a level 18 character can be in the starting area continuously killing players ten levels lower its no fun for the low level characters. At least in WoW a high level character of the opposing faction is quickly dealt with in starting areas most times. AoC had no factions, just dickheads claiming that it was PVP. People will disagree I’m sure, but killing a player so much lower than you that they can’t possibly win is pretty lame. Especially in a starting area. Why would I want to even pay monthly if I have to go through that just to get OUT of the start area? Sure you can roll a toon on a non-pvp server, but why bother? To my knowledge ***Funcom ***still hasn’t fixed the lag issue…I can just roll a character in WoW.

(People often say WoW has a lot of pricks in the game, but AoC IMO takes the cake. Its like they gave free game cards to every registered professional asshole)

I haven’t tried **Warhammer **yet, though I do have a disk. I haven’t heard much about it, to be honest. DnD online…does it even still exist? It was not user friendly to me. Never got out of the starting area. Thats a bad sign for an MMORPG. If you can’t hold my interest long enough to get out of the starting area its a given that I’m not going to go past the initial free month in subscribing. LOTRO was fun, I just wasn’t too into it.

[Lady_of_the_Lake]

@DSYoungEsq

Yes, LotL, but you can do all those things in EQ2, also. Still, the main point to the game for most people is to do the same kill-loot-sell-buybetterstuff-repeat cycle that is the fundamental basis for both games.

You’re right - I realized after I posted that I hadn’t actually answered your question! I would have deleted my silly blather, but couldn’t.

(I’d only ever gotten to level 10 in EQ2 before quitting due to frustration - much higher in EQ1 - but never to the highest levels. I mainly remember feeling forced into paths in EQ, though apparently this has changed.)

[Rigamarole]

@Merneith

It’s relevant because you’re asking what the difference is between two games and then defining “the main point” of one of games in such basic terms as to be meaningless.

I’ve listed a whole bunch of individual things that are different in the two games and numerous people have chimed in with their consensus that one game is especially different in its user-friendliness and speed of play. That’s not a trivial difference. It stems from the basic approach to game design of the respective developers. One focused on making the game slow and difficult in order to draw out people’s subscriptions and let the veterans feel like they’d achieved something. The other focused on making the game fast and slick in order to make it inviting and let everyone feel like a superhero. That’s the ‘amazing difference’ you asked about.

WoW is designed to let even the newcomers dive right in and feel awesome. As a result it’s got vastly more newcomers - and also better long-term retention since they don’t have to nail their nuts to a tree to get anywhere. That’s a successful approach. That’s why everyone wants to be the ‘next WoW,’ not the ‘next Everquest.’

Well said.

[Jayn_Newell]

@Merneith

and also better long-term retention since they don’t have to nail their nuts to a tree to get anywhere.

Which is good for luring female gamers too, since we don’t have nuts to nail

Another thing is that WoW is built around smaller groups–originally 40 mans, now 10s and 25s. This makes raiding easier since you don’t need to have as many people (getting 40+ people together at one time can be a bit of a chore), and also makes each person in the group have a bit more dynamic role. There’s less of a feeling of being a cog in a machine with a smaller group. I don’t know the group sizes for EQ2, but I’ve heard the original was somewhere around 70 for raids.