My wife and I have been playing EQ2 for about the past 3 weeks after just getting tired of other MMO’s. We had been raiding in WoW, but after so many trips in I could run Kara or Gruul’s in my sleep, and I sure didn’t want to just login to do dailys. Repeating the same exact task every day over and over for a fixed amount of pay is what I do at my office, why would I want to come home and do the exact same thing?
We had been playing Age of Conan, which at first was a good bit of fun. I really had great hope for it, but leave it to Funcom to make the game actually worse than when it released. The real turning point (besides the lack of content at level 50+) was when they made grey named/boss mobs hit you back at your level, not the level of the mob. Since I really enjoy soloing or duoing instances or other content, they ruined a large portion of the game for me.
So, we reactivated our Station Pass accounts and managed to get an upgrade to RoK, and started playing again. Some of the things that annoyed me the first time I played were gone, so that was a plus. We both rolled up a Sarnak, but my wife later switched to another race/class. I picked defiler, wanting something different. I stuck with it till about level 30, really enjoying my time in the new starter zone, doing all the quests, etc. I really got to wanting to do some serious dps so I ended up betraying to Kelethin, then moving to South Qeynos as a mystic. First fight as a combat speced mystic as amazing. Great dps, quick fights, etc. It reminded me of my Herald of Xolti in AoC.
Now I am at level 54 and having a blast in EQ2. Whereas a good bit of folks are looking forward to either Warhammer or Wrath of the Litch King, I’m really tired of beta testing a new game and am not looking forward to Blizzards “more of the same” expansion solution. I’m enjoying playing something that’s fun, and for goodness sakes, actually works as intended.
July 23, 2008 at 3:05 pm
I’ve played EQ2 for a stint but not very long. It’s one of those game I was thinking of trying again and you may have convinced me to.
July 26, 2008 at 12:39 pm
I hope you find it fun as well. Some of these older MMO’s that have been trucking along for 4, 5, even 10 years have had plenty of time to work out alot of the kinks that some of the newer ones still have. Some are small enough that you can end up knowing a good bit of the regular players, and the dev’s that are working on them, for the most part, are dedicated to the game and want to create good content for the smaller base of players they have.
I still play SWG for example. Its got issues, its older, can be a real bugger to figure out if you comeing from a mainstream game like EQ or WOW, but it has its little niche (at least until the KOTOR MMO hits the shelves). I wasn’t around for the CU or NGE, so I have no issues with what it used to be like to play, so I don’t carry that baggage with me when I started. At one time we got so into playing it, we had two SWG accounts, and my wife and I were both dual-boxing.
So give some of these older MMO’s a try. Most of them that came out and are still running have changed a great deal from when you might have first heard about them or even played them. Sometimes they are even a totally different game.