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New Year MMOG News
New developments this week in a few games, with Cryptic Studio's City of Heroes releasing the much anticipated Issue 3 expansion, which adds new archetypes and power sets to the game. Citing increasing costs for running the game Mythic Entertainment has raised the subscription price for Dark Age of Camelot to $14.95 a month, but with a significant discount for long-term subscriptions. Darniaq wrote in to mention that Sony Online Entertainment announced a new Massive title for the PSP at CES, Untold Legends, in what looks to be direct competition to Pocket Kingdoms. Finally, Tobold of Grimwell Online has a nice recap of MMORPGs in 2004, complete with predictions for this year.
I'm personally looking forward to Reclamation (by the same guys who developed Underlight, one of the first MMORPGs) because of it's rather interesting-sounding ideas - it's based in a dream world so you won't be seeing your conventional goblins and orcs, it'll be scary monsters instead (charmingly called Nightmares).
It also promises a decent PvP system which is notably lacking in both EverQuest II and World of Warcraft. The PvP system is based around various Houses which you can join and fight other houses. It also focuses on roleplaying, and there will be no NPCs (as in vendors/generic people rather than creeps) so everything is player-driven. Has anyone else heard of this game?
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Increasing costs for running the game? Or dwindling player base? I expect a large number of their players have recently migrated to World of Warcraft.
Everquest 2 is a worse grind than EQ1, it's on par with Lineage II and old EQ1 with class/race penalties and "hell" levels. All this time, the competition (WoW and CoH) is giving players more fun, caters the solo player too, extremely reduced downtime and did I say fun?
2004 also proved that SOE has no problem in releasing half finished hurried expansions/games all in the name of profit. While the main competition releases a well polished game, SOE hurries out releases, be that for EQ, SWG or EQ2.
2004 also showed that SOE has no problem in releasing medicore expansions. Gates of Discord has yet to be beaten (almost a year old expansion), Omens of War has guilds stalled in Anguish, EQ1 is bleeding. Not to mention, combat revamp in Star Wars Galaxies?
Bold prediction: EQ2 will bleed after the "ooh nice graphics" wears off. The game is a grind fest. Same time, CoH and WoW will pick up the refugees.
SOE still fails to realise that grind != fun, a game should be fun not work.
You CAN pirate the games and play on private servers. You won't get the same level of support as the official servers, but you can play the game for free. DAOC has some free servers, so does WoW.
Look around and I'm sure other games also have free "private" servers.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
First off, downtime in EQ2 is very rare in groups. Soloing is much harder though and will have downtime. Second, WoW has had it fair share of problems. Actually, they have a ton. Login server outtage is nothing out of the norm. Four hours of maintenance once a week is scheduled but it usually runs to 6+ (during which time the forums are also down). The blizzard downloader is HORRID. Auction house, mail box, and server lag during peak times can also get really bad. Oh, and their is no point in changing your home point from Ironforge (for alliance) because that is the only place with an auction house. Also, there is no honor system in the PvP which means a lot of ganking of lower level players who have no chance.
Despite all this I still play WoW over EQ2 even though I own both. I just get sick of all EQ2 sucks and WoW is perfect talk. EQ2 has had 1 day of downtime where the players were both reimbursed financially and given accelerated experience to make up for it. Heck, a written apology from the CEO doesn't hurt either.
EQ2 isn't perfect, but to claim it is so amazingly better than WoW is just wrong. WoW is a casual game. There are tons of people at the level cap already, and there really isn't much to do then other than start a new character and do it again.
EQ2 takes a lot more time. It is group based. Grouping in WoW is usually reserved for instanced dungeons and other elite quests. I gain almost all my level experience solo. In fact, I usually earn less experience when grouped.
If you just don't like SOE then fine. However, the EQ2 dev team has done a pretty bang up job with EQ2. To some people what you claim as grinding is fun.
It's about time SOE announced a new MMO.. after all we are almost a week into the new year
1) Your analysis is based on bad assumptions so your result is way off. 2) You're a sick bastard for fucking a horse.