I also found that the entire world was just full of idiot gankers. People who found it hilarious to kill me after i've just worked my way through 20 minutes of fighting down a hallway to get to a specific person for a quest.
The most annoying thing is, at the time i quit, there was no incentive to kill anyone as there was no pvp reward system in place. PVP experience? Didn't exist. PVP Renown gear? Didn't exist.
But it was just a big massive free for all. You couldn't team with anyone because the moment you got close to a person they would attack you out of fear that you would attack them first.
It also didn't make any sense that you could attack people of your own race. That was just stupid. I would be speaking to an npc completing a quest and by the time my conversation was over i would be down to half health due to some joker stabbing me in the back constantly.
Eventually you couldn't go anywhere without a chaperone as you'd get killed by other players again and again and again even though there's no reward or incentive for them.
Even getting into a guild wasn't much fun. If you wanted to do a quest with your guild it would take you 15 minutes to run to the only travel path on the entire map. Then travel through several different maps to get to them. Consequently everyone is sat around for at least half an hour waiting for you.
There was no structure with this game. I had diabolically bad lag that eventually made it unplayable yet i was talking to a friend through skype with no issues at all.
So i quit, told Funcom why and moved onto Warhammer Online.
It's such a refreshing change. It's tight, the gfx are great and the Realm vs Realm is actually fun for a change with a real incentive to fight other players. Now if they can only sort out the tradeskills so you can make something worth using it would be excellent!
I read an article recently about the VHS/Betamax wars in the early 80's. Now everyone knows that the Betamax was a better machine, the quality was better, the tapes didn't degrade as quickly BUT the argument he gave for VHS can be perfectly attributed to the PC/Mac argument.
I am a web developer in a design studio dominated by Mac's and Mac users. It has to be the only place in the world where i am a minority being a pc user but whenever they start on me i can always come back with this salient point.
When i decide to buy a pc over a mac i am not just buying a computer. I'm buying a CHOICE. With my new pc i suddenly have the choice of dozens of computer magazines all specialising in specific pc attributes. I'm buying the ability to walk into virtually any computer shop and know they will have products and parts to fit my machine. I'm also buying into something the Mac will never have: Competitive Pricing!
I can scour hundreds of websites all selling parts cheaper than the last that will make my computer that little bit better. I can buy motherboards, CPU's, PSU's, Gfx cards, memory, etc. I can mix and match according to my budget. I know you can buy seperate memory and HDD's for the Mac but the choice is certainly not as extensive as it is for the PC
I can walk into my local PC World (PC Warehouse style store in the UK) and pick up anything off the shelf, take it home and install it. The only Apple shop i know is in London. I know that virtually all cameras, digital video cameras, mp3 players, etc. will work with my machine without even having to check the box for compatibility.
This is precisely the reason VHS took over from Betamax, not because it was a better machine, but because it was more popular. You didn't have to root around at the back of the video store to find the right tapes for your machine, everything was at the front of the store in rows and rows in different colours and designs. If it broke down, people were fighting over each other to fix it, each undercutting the last on price.
Mac users seem to delight in pointing out all the viruses, trojans, etc for the pc but for them i have 3 words: Nortons Internet Security. Any pc user knows before the computer goes anyway near the internet he needs a firewall and antivirus. Of course no internet protection software is perfect but as long as the user is completely brain-dead he's relatively safe.
You can keep your £1000 average Macs. I'll stick with my PC i made myself with parts from different stockists. I'll keep my foul Microsoft Windows XP SP2 and most importantly i'll keep my ability to purchase so many more products for my PC than there are for the Mac.
I was illustrating salient points about EQ2. Everyone knows you can run WoW on a 900MHz quite comfortably but on first impressions EQ2 was another Half-Life 2: major upgrade needed, but that wasn't the case.
I did say that i'd only played WoW for 3 days during open beta. And what i played was uninspiring. Whereas Everquest 2 had me interested from the beginning.
It had an excellent tutorial that had a great learning curve. The graphics were very impressive for an MMO as is the gameplay.
The thing is i really wanted to play WoW and didn't care about eq2 until i played them both. I just wasn't impressed with WoW as much as i was with EQ2
Am i the only person in the entire world who thinks that EQ2 blows WoW completely out of the water?
Initially i wasn't even that bothered about EQ2 and went for the open beta on WoW. After 3 days of playing it i felt something last felt when i was playing City of Heroes: Complete Boredom.
I normally play mmo's with a friend but as i was a troll and he was a dwarf we started miles away with no chance of meeting up until we were both much higher levels. Also the death process and running around as a spirit annoyed the hell out of me. If you had died trying to kill that uber boss you had to run back to find your body, then run back to your camp to get your equipment mended, then run back to the boss, fight for 5 seconds and die, repeat...
Maybe i didn't explore the game properly but it just didn't hold my immediate attention like i wanted it to.
Everquest 2 on the other hand, i enjoyed right from the start. The graphics have the be the best i've ever seen on an MMO. Whereas WoW was cartoony and bright EQ2's are detailed and dark. When you fought mob's who were clearly giving you an old-school beating you actually stood a good chance of surviving when you ran away.
Also you really don't need a hefty machine to run it like people are saying, it worked fine on my second machine which is a gut-busting 1.2GHz.
The crafting is a complete game in itself for those people (like myself) who like to make everything. The fact that you can lvl and branch out as an artisan seperate to your fighting profession just doubles the fun. If you get bored of running around fighting npc's, you can go craft yourself some new armour/spells/weapons/etc... And you don't need to rely on ANYONE to be able to do it.
Obviously i am but one person but if anyone asked my opinion i would heartily recommend EQ2 over WoW for a more fulfilling MMO experience.
One more thing that makes EQ2 a richer experience: npc's with VOICES!!! It's amazing how much difference that actually makes...
When i was a kid all i got for christmas was a lump of coal and a kick up the arse. Then for dinner our mother and our father would kill us with a breadknife and dance on our graves singing Hallelujah.
You tell that to kids today and they won't believe you
I got mine free when i took out a new contract with T-Mobile. But of course i'm paying 23 pounds a month. If you want to buy one outright you'd be best looking on e-bay for a second hand one.
As far as i know you still need a sim-card in it for it to be operable. Even if you have no contract or outgoing signal there needs to be a sim-card in there. I don't know what the deal is in America but here in England we can buy pay-as-you-go phones, basically you buy the phone outright and then buy 'call vouchers' as and when you need them. If you don't want to buy a single voucher then that's entirely up to you, there's no bills.
Am i the only one who really likes the n-gage. The display is crisp and clean, the graphics are great.
As it has it's own operating system you can install new programs. It has an mp3 player, a radio, real one to watch movies and can play games, far more than any other handheld console. And it's a phone to boot, a perfect reason to carry it around with you at all times.
Fair enough, the games at the moment are pretty uninspiring but there's some great stuff on the horizon including quite a few n-gage only games.
I'm just a little annoyed that i got my phone at the weekend and they announce a revamp literally 3 days after!
As a console it's a lot better than the gameboy, it's comfy to hold and it's really isn't that large slipping into my pocket quite easily where i can hardly feel it.
Nokia really have thrown everything they've got at the n-gage it's got more bells and whistles than you can shake a stick at. I don't think it deserves to be slated as much as it has been.
Remember, everyone slated the Xbox when it came out for it's immense lack of games but now it's got a pretty strong foothold due to the slow trickle of games being constantly added to the range.
Christopher Ecclestone is actually a very good actor, he can be both serious (as was seen in 28 Days Later) and slightly light-hearted when he played the son of God in the TV drama serial 'The Second Coming'.
Which was, imho, absolutely fantastic and one of the best dramas ever shown on British TV (They're normally about relationships in middle-age...)
I'm sure he will bring the much loved quirkiness that makes Doctor Who such an interesting character to watch. I, for one, am rather looking forward to it.
Slashdot Mirror
It got really dull, really fast.
I also found that the entire world was just full of idiot gankers. People who found it hilarious to kill me after i've just worked my way through 20 minutes of fighting down a hallway to get to a specific person for a quest.
The most annoying thing is, at the time i quit, there was no incentive to kill anyone as there was no pvp reward system in place. PVP experience? Didn't exist. PVP Renown gear? Didn't exist.
But it was just a big massive free for all. You couldn't team with anyone because the moment you got close to a person they would attack you out of fear that you would attack them first.
It also didn't make any sense that you could attack people of your own race. That was just stupid. I would be speaking to an npc completing a quest and by the time my conversation was over i would be down to half health due to some joker stabbing me in the back constantly.
Eventually you couldn't go anywhere without a chaperone as you'd get killed by other players again and again and again even though there's no reward or incentive for them.
Even getting into a guild wasn't much fun. If you wanted to do a quest with your guild it would take you 15 minutes to run to the only travel path on the entire map. Then travel through several different maps to get to them. Consequently everyone is sat around for at least half an hour waiting for you.
There was no structure with this game. I had diabolically bad lag that eventually made it unplayable yet i was talking to a friend through skype with no issues at all.
So i quit, told Funcom why and moved onto Warhammer Online.
It's such a refreshing change. It's tight, the gfx are great and the Realm vs Realm is actually fun for a change with a real incentive to fight other players. Now if they can only sort out the tradeskills so you can make something worth using it would be excellent!
I read an article recently about the VHS/Betamax wars in the early 80's. Now everyone knows that the Betamax was a better machine, the quality was better, the tapes didn't degrade as quickly BUT the argument he gave for VHS can be perfectly attributed to the PC/Mac argument.
I am a web developer in a design studio dominated by Mac's and Mac users. It has to be the only place in the world where i am a minority being a pc user but whenever they start on me i can always come back with this salient point.
When i decide to buy a pc over a mac i am not just buying a computer. I'm buying a CHOICE. With my new pc i suddenly have the choice of dozens of computer magazines all specialising in specific pc attributes. I'm buying the ability to walk into virtually any computer shop and know they will have products and parts to fit my machine. I'm also buying into something the Mac will never have: Competitive Pricing!
I can scour hundreds of websites all selling parts cheaper than the last that will make my computer that little bit better. I can buy motherboards, CPU's, PSU's, Gfx cards, memory, etc. I can mix and match according to my budget. I know you can buy seperate memory and HDD's for the Mac but the choice is certainly not as extensive as it is for the PC
I can walk into my local PC World (PC Warehouse style store in the UK) and pick up anything off the shelf, take it home and install it. The only Apple shop i know is in London. I know that virtually all cameras, digital video cameras, mp3 players, etc. will work with my machine without even having to check the box for compatibility.
This is precisely the reason VHS took over from Betamax, not because it was a better machine, but because it was more popular. You didn't have to root around at the back of the video store to find the right tapes for your machine, everything was at the front of the store in rows and rows in different colours and designs. If it broke down, people were fighting over each other to fix it, each undercutting the last on price.
Mac users seem to delight in pointing out all the viruses, trojans, etc for the pc but for them i have 3 words: Nortons Internet Security. Any pc user knows before the computer goes anyway near the internet he needs a firewall and antivirus. Of course no internet protection software is perfect but as long as the user is completely brain-dead he's relatively safe.
You can keep your £1000 average Macs. I'll stick with my PC i made myself with parts from different stockists. I'll keep my foul Microsoft Windows XP SP2 and most importantly i'll keep my ability to purchase so many more products for my PC than there are for the Mac.
I was illustrating salient points about EQ2. Everyone knows you can run WoW on a 900MHz quite comfortably but on first impressions EQ2 was another Half-Life 2: major upgrade needed, but that wasn't the case.
I did say that i'd only played WoW for 3 days during open beta. And what i played was uninspiring. Whereas Everquest 2 had me interested from the beginning.
It had an excellent tutorial that had a great learning curve. The graphics were very impressive for an MMO as is the gameplay.
The thing is i really wanted to play WoW and didn't care about eq2 until i played them both. I just wasn't impressed with WoW as much as i was with EQ2
Am i the only person in the entire world who thinks that EQ2 blows WoW completely out of the water?
Initially i wasn't even that bothered about EQ2 and went for the open beta on WoW. After 3 days of playing it i felt something last felt when i was playing City of Heroes: Complete Boredom.
I normally play mmo's with a friend but as i was a troll and he was a dwarf we started miles away with no chance of meeting up until we were both much higher levels. Also the death process and running around as a spirit annoyed the hell out of me. If you had died trying to kill that uber boss you had to run back to find your body, then run back to your camp to get your equipment mended, then run back to the boss, fight for 5 seconds and die, repeat...
Maybe i didn't explore the game properly but it just didn't hold my immediate attention like i wanted it to.
Everquest 2 on the other hand, i enjoyed right from the start. The graphics have the be the best i've ever seen on an MMO. Whereas WoW was cartoony and bright EQ2's are detailed and dark. When you fought mob's who were clearly giving you an old-school beating you actually stood a good chance of surviving when you ran away.
Also you really don't need a hefty machine to run it like people are saying, it worked fine on my second machine which is a gut-busting 1.2GHz.
The crafting is a complete game in itself for those people (like myself) who like to make everything. The fact that you can lvl and branch out as an artisan seperate to your fighting profession just doubles the fun. If you get bored of running around fighting npc's, you can go craft yourself some new armour/spells/weapons/etc... And you don't need to rely on ANYONE to be able to do it.
Obviously i am but one person but if anyone asked my opinion i would heartily recommend EQ2 over WoW for a more fulfilling MMO experience.
One more thing that makes EQ2 a richer experience: npc's with VOICES!!! It's amazing how much difference that actually makes...
Can't..... resist..... desire... too... strong
When i was a kid all i got for christmas was a lump of coal and a kick up the arse. Then for dinner our mother and our father would kill us with a breadknife and dance on our graves singing Hallelujah.
You tell that to kids today and they won't believe you
I got mine free when i took out a new contract with T-Mobile. But of course i'm paying 23 pounds a month. If you want to buy one outright you'd be best looking on e-bay for a second hand one.
As far as i know you still need a sim-card in it for it to be operable. Even if you have no contract or outgoing signal there needs to be a sim-card in there. I don't know what the deal is in America but here in England we can buy pay-as-you-go phones, basically you buy the phone outright and then buy 'call vouchers' as and when you need them. If you don't want to buy a single voucher then that's entirely up to you, there's no bills.
Hope that helps
Am i the only one who really likes the n-gage. The display is crisp and clean, the graphics are great.
As it has it's own operating system you can install new programs. It has an mp3 player, a radio, real one to watch movies and can play games, far more than any other handheld console. And it's a phone to boot, a perfect reason to carry it around with you at all times.
Fair enough, the games at the moment are pretty uninspiring but there's some great stuff on the horizon including quite a few n-gage only games.
I'm just a little annoyed that i got my phone at the weekend and they announce a revamp literally 3 days after!
As a console it's a lot better than the gameboy, it's comfy to hold and it's really isn't that large slipping into my pocket quite easily where i can hardly feel it.
Nokia really have thrown everything they've got at the n-gage it's got more bells and whistles than you can shake a stick at. I don't think it deserves to be slated as much as it has been.
Remember, everyone slated the Xbox when it came out for it's immense lack of games but now it's got a pretty strong foothold due to the slow trickle of games being constantly added to the range.
Christopher Ecclestone is actually a very good actor, he can be both serious (as was seen in 28 Days Later) and slightly light-hearted when he played the son of God in the TV drama serial 'The Second Coming'.
Which was, imho, absolutely fantastic and one of the best dramas ever shown on British TV (They're normally about relationships in middle-age...)
I'm sure he will bring the much loved quirkiness that makes Doctor Who such an interesting character to watch. I, for one, am rather looking forward to it.