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SOE Station Pass Reviewed
Geldonyetich, at Grimwell.com, has reviewed the pile of games that makes up the SOE All-Access Station Pass. The pass includes SWG, EQ, EQ2, Planetside, and the "Station" games Tanarus, Infantry, and Cosmic Rift. From the article: "In the interest of having a complete review, I installed and took a good look at each of the individual PC game offerings under the Station Access subscription. I didn't have the necessary broadband PS2 hardware to try out EverQuest Online Adventures nor the Apple hardware to run EverQuest: Macintosh Edition. Just because I didn't include them doesn't mean they aren't part of the subscription plan. Chances are if you're considering the Station Access subscription you are a PC gamer anyway, as otherwise you've only access to one or two of the games."
Yep Vanguard will take everything bad about eq (forced grouping, long tedious progression, huge time commitment) increase it 10 fold (harvesting and crafting will require a group?!?!) and slap some nice graphics on it.
This is why 'from the original creators of EQ' is a bad thing; they just repeat the same mistakes.
Rated +1 for True
Remember EverQuest? How there were great parts and parts that made you want to scream?
Brad McQuaid was the design force behind the parts that made you want to scream, and argued for years for their retention post-release when other people maintaining the game wanted to remove them.
looking at their FAQ i see
'soloing is like soloing in the original EQ' (that's pretty much a direct quote BTW). Honestly that's the firs thing that lets me know this game is for a different audience than me (and the majority of people playing MMO's now)
Corpse recovery will be a pain in the ass just like it was in the original eq (hope you keep a second set of great equipment in your bank because you'll need it to get back to your corpse)
Harvesting will be group focused.
and other things that scream 'THis is EQ with a prettier package'. things that chased away a large number of players (like myself) because it was too much of a pain in the ass and too big of a time comitment.
they can say they are "making a 3rd generation game" but their FAQ tells a different story.
Ok mods, grow some brains here. He is speaking the truth.
McQuaid was the biggest proponent of "hell levels", xp grinding etc. Verant was the big pusher for all of that stuff. Once Verant was absorbed into the giant known as SOE things changed.
Hell levels were dropped, you could med without staring at your book, xp bonuses were granted etc. That was why Brad left. He thought Sony was making the game entirely too easy. His "vision" (TM) is to have you sit at your machine for years to reach that highest level or finish the hardest quest.
Hm, I got modded as a troll for saying what you just said.
Frankly, the reason I think Vanguard is going to be much less successful than people like rellix think is the near-total unquestioning devotion and intolerance of alternative perspectives that V:SoH anticipators display in threads like this.
It's established fact, to the point of being banal, that McQuad was the person at Verant that wanted to retain slow level grinds, item camps, hell levels, competition for a limited supply of spawns, etc, etc. You can like this and support it in V:SoH, or you can dislike this and prefer, say, WoW's design. But pointing out that the people who put that stuff in EQ are the same people designing V:SoH isn't a troll. It's just a fact.
And if you find that fact angering or threatening, maybe you need to reassess your opinion of how good V:SoH is likely to be.