Gilgame

i may have said it already in this post, but wow, eq2, especially aoc get the most of their income by introducing new players to the game. that content they have leveling up is their only real hope to gain new customers and the high end content is their only chance to retain customers.

most of us have been here for years even though there is much less content high end than say, eq1 which gave you much more content than you could complete and become bored with before a new expansion came out. if we were playing eq1 back in 2004 instead of eq2 right now, we would have been playing its new expansion about 2 months ago with another to look forward to in 4 months. in other words, we would have been merely scratching the surface of harder content by now because of gearing up and keying members of your raid force.

this game has almost none of that. you can joust AEs in this game, even if you are wearing mastercrafted gear you can still participate to a pretty good degree. the only characters gear who really matters is your tanks.

so how did it get this bad? well you can blame wow first and foremost for mcdonaldizing MMOs, sending out probably spenting 50 times more money on advertising their simple, noob-friendly game than eq2 does on avertising. wow has shown that mmo's can be insanely profitable, you only need to sell your soul to get there.

everyone is trying to be like wow now. it isnt what it used to be and it will never be that way again. you sacrifice quality for quantity and your profits go way up. every business does it sooner or later, integrity just isnt profitable enough.

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Pinski

You're stupid gilgame. EQ2 hasn't changed it's raid mechanics at all. This isn't because of WoW, this is because of the direction the ENTIRE MMORPG genre has been going. Quit blaming it on WoW, and blame it on the real issue. People started making MMORPGs for the $, rather than for the love of the game.

Fact, games are no longer made for the love of the game.
Fact, games are made for the $$.
Fact, nobody wants to cater to the gamer who has been playing games for years anymore.
Fact, if you've been playing games for years you've seen it most of these "groundbreaking" features that are just not coming out.
Fact, games will never go back to what they once were without everybody no longer playing games.

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How many times do you hear it? It goes on all day long
Everyone knows everything And no one's ever wrong
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Until later..

Gilgame

Wow, no shit motherfucker. what game do you think changed the mmo genre? because of WoW's overwhelming success, mmo's are trying to duplicate wow, a game with such little flavor and skill required.

games which used to have depth and content are not nearly as profitable, its all about the bottom line, just like everything else. thats exactly what i just said. i dont know if you cant read or maybe your just plain fucking retarded, but next time you should probably do some research before you repeat what i just fucking said not even an hour ago. dumbass.

p.s. what do you fucking think i ment when i said 'wow has mcdonaldized mmos' you probably thought blizzard was opening up a burger joint right down the road from you ya stupid cunt.

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Pinski

That's odd, considering EQ2 hasn't really changed at all since launch, or did you miss that? EQ2 has always been gear the tank, joust the AE, you win. But I guess I must have been playing a different game than you back then and you weren't playing EQ2 thus you have no idea what you're talking about. There are only 2 things that EQ2 has that was influenced by WoW. The 1st was PvP, the 2nd was Soloing to level. Everything else EQ2 had before WoW was even thought to become big.

EQ2 sucks because EQ2 was designed to be this way. WoW hasn't done shit to EQ2 except make it continue on its path that they decided from the beginning. To not be EQ1 with newer graphics, but to be a more casual MMO. It just happened that WoW came out at the same time and was a much better casual's MMO than EQ2 ever was. But hey, you can think it your way, and I can think it based on the facts.

Let me repeat, EQ2 is the way it is, because of itself, not because of WoW. If WoW wasn't such a huge success, guess what. EQ2 would still be the same game it is today.

__________________
How many times do you hear it? It goes on all day long
Everyone knows everything And no one's ever wrong
Until later...
Who can you believe? It's hard to play it safe
But apart from a few good friends We don't take anything on faith
Until later..

Gilgame

i think many people can and will agree that the changes to eq2, specifically the soloability all the way up to 80 from 70 by questing is a direct change derived from wow, the pvp, which i dont know how you would know anything about since you are from blue, has gotten a bit more 'lite' since its release.

but what i am talking about is a market trend, you seem to be hinging on the fact that eq2, the base game has not changed much and i disagree, the game was completely differant and much more hardcore when it was released, but after people started leaving the game because of all of the death penalties and difficulty to level, they eased up until we finally has a game which mirrors wow.

new games coming out are much more focused on the macro-game than the microgame and almost all of them are wow-esque, in their advertising, their ease of play and their lack of end game content are perfect examples of how it makes more sense marketing wise to forget about raiders and long time customers in favor of a new crop, a new breed, and nearly untapped markets of potential new gamers (females, older folks ect), after all, they both pay the same 15$ a month.

As much as you deny it, EQ2 HAS CHANGED, even eq1, which i would have considered sacred ground has become even more like wow. the business model for mmos has changed and you have wow to thank for it whether you agree or not.

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Gilgame

its called cause and effect, supply and demand, environment and evolution. if the most successful business model for mmos was to be a hardcore game like eq1 was, where death would result in actual LOSS OF TIME AND EXP, then i agree, eq2 would be what it was when it released, but eq2 had so many complaints about the difficulty and frustration of group exp debt, exp debt, and corpse recovery, that they scraped the entire system in favor of a more wow-esque approuch, no more exp debt, no more corpse recovery, no more unnessesary hardcore hassle.

games do not change because they just feel like it, they change because they want to be more successful and gain the most business and lose the least, wow's mmo business model remains almost completely unchanged to date, yet when you think of how much eq2 has evolved and altered itself from its original game to become less hardcore and more casual your only answer for this is "because it was going to happen anyway."

no pal, it happened because wow has more than 6 million subscribers. environmental changes occur and you either evolve or die. i guarantee eq2 has more business today for being like wow than it would if they left in all of the old hardcore shit.

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Gilgame

Now that being said, i believe EQ2 falls short of its goal, WoW may or may not, i dont have any idea of the amount of late game content in that game, but EQ2 is (or would seem to be) absolutely horrible at holding onto longtime customers.

When AoC came out, my guild dissolved in a matter of days (along with many several others on blue servers), thats the kind of loyalty that people have to this game. their only playing it now because 'there isnt anything better out there' and as bad as eq2 is, it still is better than i consider wow to me, certainly better than AoC and we'll have to see with WAR.

if SoE treated EQ2 like it is and should be (its flagship mmo) and pumped more money into it for more content, it would be much more successful than it is, but SoE is instead fishing for it an instant smash hit, taking popular media and turning it into an MMO (Star wars, The Matrix, pirates of the burning sea, the Agency, DC universe).

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Valtyra

Can I have your babys?
Really its gets rather old to hear WoW did this and WoW did that.
`Sell you soul to play it?`Its a fucking game.EQ2 is flawed and prob.
always will be.Its had a horrid retention rate from the start.I was there I seen it.Ive come back 3 times, Lvled my Inq to max in RoK.
I would love to stay but they have no direction it seems.And I wish they would.

kyros

eq2 fails because sony fails. because the developers fail.

eq2 does not fail because world of warcraft is successful.

Gilgame

wow this forum is home to some stupid motherfuckers.

WOW's success has nothing to do with eq2's status at all. wow turned what would be non-gamers, into casual and hardcore wow gamers, i have not met i dont think a single person who had played eq1 or eq2 to become a hardcore wow player.


i dont blame wow for anything, infact, they are responsible for bringing more into the genre which is never bad. that they are transforming the genre is also not bad, my complaint about wow is that it caters much more to the casual than the hardcore, leaving the hardcore to be left in the dust, a business model which is starting to be followed by concentration on the early game and neglect on the end-game.

if you fuckers arent going to even read my posts then dont bother posting your dimwitted responses.

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