...my experience with both betas thus far.
EverQuest 2
Ok I downloaded the client, patched it up etc, etc. The login screen is just like SWG nice simple, etc. I logged into the game. The same music is there at the loading animation, just improved.
Worlds of Warcraft
Holy crap I got in! Those were my first thoughts. Then followed by, holy crap everyone on every board is screaming mad about having to go through fileplanet for this stress test. I like fileplanet so whatever. Ok I finish downloading the zip file. Ziped its 2.6gigs. 30 minutes later its finished unzipping. And thats just to get to the point of installing it. 30 minutes later its installed.
Intro to Character Seleect
EverQuest 2 : Takes you through the invidia popup, SOE's, another one I cant remember, a DELL popup, and then the big everquest letters. Then straight to the character selection screen. No intro video. Bummer. Hope one makes retail.
Worlds of Warcraft : Much faster. Double click on the icon, 3 seconds later the screen goes black. First time you load up you get the intro video which I hear is the same from last years E3. Now everyone everywhere is screaming and rejoicing this as the best video yeet, but I don't see it. Ok awesome graphics, great music. But honestly I got more of a kick out of two other videos made by Blizzard. 1, human and orc fighting in field which is them bombed by them stone guys. 2, wc3 when the two orcs face off against their god. Anyways, nice video then off to main screen. Booming music, neat background, login and password then your off.
Character Select/Creation
EverQuest 2 : Choose your race, male or female. If the race can be good and evil you then get to choose. Good guys go to qeynos, bad guys goto freeport. Then you can customize everything. Ever played SWG? Just like it except for some reason no matter how you adjust any particular aspect of your character they pretty much look like the rest. Only real differences you will immediately notice when looking at your friends ingame would be the hairstyles. Everything else is extremely subtle. You then choose a name and server and your off.
Worlds of Warcraft : Choose your server first. Its separated by time zone and then be server number. So if you have a friend that played in california and choose their time zone you will have to choose west coast time zone then choose the server otherwise you will never even see their server number to begin with. Select your race, simple enough. 8 races, 4 good and 4 bad. No cute little peon race from wc3. Bummed me out to no end but thats life. Male/Female. Then adjust their hair style, skin tone, face, and hair color. Very limited customization here, just the basics. Your name, and then your off.
First Impressions / Tutorial
EverQuest 2 : Ok these guys are SOE aren't pretending you know anything. You are hand walked through a indepth tutorial that teaches you everything from walking to the basics of combat. This tutorial is no doubt the most fun tutorial I've ever played around in. Your on a fairly small ship, single mast, and the ocean waters are rolling and pitching. I just watched the water roll for about 5 minutes heh until I heard the captain call me over. Thats right, he spoke to me. I have to say, EQ2 really has a head start indepth wise over every single other mmo ever in this aspect. I mean speech ingame. Amazing. Very well done, they sound the part, perfect.
I learn how to walk, talk, kill a goblin thing, trade, buy, sell, open chests, the basics. From here you are put on refugee island which is where everyone who choose not to do the tutorial will begin. Nice beaches, some docks, and some high upity up yelling at you to get over to him and talk. This is where you choose your starting profession. Fighter, Scout, Priest, Mage, etc. you get weapons, some food, and then your off.
The questing system in this game is nice and annoying at the same time. Nice in that it gives excellent detail in both the journal screen and in the little square in your upper right corner which keeps tabs on whatever your doing at the moment. Annoying in that it often times dosent give the best details of where the next person you want to speak to is and also that the lovely gold trail that does occasionally lead you often times didnt appear for me. I did notice though that if you dont get a line, turn around abit then turn back in the direction its supposed to be leading you and it always appeared for me then. The quests are nice through out the game. Plenty of combat ones, but also lots that arent. Errand boy style ones will have you running all through Qeynos and Freeport. So many quests that a week into playing my woodelf scout I still hadn't left qeynos and was lvl10 heh.
Anyways, the refugee island is the last major step of the tutorial, you do various jobs, learn about banking, learn about some of your individual class abilities, get to beat up an orc which also introduces you to instanced caves. If you enter it by yourself, your the only player in it. Get a group together for this one as the orc himself has two priest goblins and three warrior goblins protecting him. You can if you choose learn about crafting which I'll go further indepth with later on. Combat goes much more indepth which I'll explain more about later on. All in all a very nice tutorial.
One thing to note however that they don't enlighten the new players on is when you choose your profession you immediately join a channel that is geared towards said profession. They don't tell you how to talk in it though which results in lots of people talking in /ooc or /shout asking how to do so. Simply type /1 and you can talk in it. There, sheesh. heh.
Worlds of Warcraft : Ok the tutorial here is less obvious and abit more lacking. You go through a vid passby of the city you begin in with someone talking to you and bringing your race history upto speed. And of course this is where you get your first taste of the games graphics. This engine is going to be a love it/hate it sort of thing I can tell already. Essentially its the warcraft 3 graphics slightly enhanced. I like it...but after awhile I find myself wandering back to EQ2's amazing graphics engine which has a setting that most computers can't even use yet heh. Back to wow. Looking around you noticed a exclamation mark over a npc's head. There you have it. Thats how easy it is to find quests. Talk to anyone with one of these and you get a quest. When you see the briefing of the quest it includes a description and a reward. Most quests give you a choice of items for a reward along with some cash. These first few quests give you an intro to navigation, combat, combat and noncombat oriented questing, caves, picking up resources, and more. you pretty quickly find yourself building up silver but dont buy anything just yet. Complete all your quests around your starting town and you will suddenly find yourself sporting an entire new outfit with some nice weapons to boot. When you complete a quests objectives usually you will need to return to the giver of the quest for your reward. He/she will now have a gold questionmark over his/her's head. talk to them, and choose your reward.
In all honesty there isn't a whole lot to be said here for this game. Its simple and your 5 year old will have it figured out in a matter of minutes <shrugs> They definitely sought out to appeal to newcommers to mmo's and excel in this instance. And of course all the blizzard fans naturally. But I suspect that if you were to remove the WoW logo from the game it might not sell as well or compete with EQ2 like it is. There really isn't anything to this game that you havent seen elsewhere, the appealing thing though is that no other game has taken all these facets of mmo games and brought it all into one shinny box for you to play with.
Housing
EverQuest 2 : Pretty cool actually. Once you leave the refugee island you will immediately be sent to a local inn where you have a nice empty room waiting for you. Its free to purchase and costs 5sp every 7 days to rent. Rejoice, you can have friends visit and hang out in your room!
<glares at ffxi>
There are merchants who sell just about every aspect of homestyle you could want, except for chests to store things in. Currently you cant do that.
Around town you will notice other taverns and even entire houses for sale. In the taverns simply walk around to the rooms and click on a door. it will tell you how much to purchase and how much for rent. Actual houses work the same way but since I never got to go in one I can only hope that the interior of the houses are instanced. Meaning 10 different people can own that same house in the city and have their own interiors to do with as they please.
If you fall behind on rent don't worry about loosing everything inside, I fell behind afew times and it simply wouldnt let me back in my room unless I paid my rent.
Worlds of Warcraft : No housing that I know of though ingame some people have mentioned that its on its way.
Combat
EverQuest 2 : Simple enough. Click on something you want to attack. First off a ring around its feet is color coordinated as to whether you can handle it or if it will put a smack down on you. Secondly its name. same color coordination here but also if you see a red border around the name, this creature will agro on you if you get to close. Also when you click on the creature look just below your hit point bar. There is its hp bar, the word solor/group will denote whether you can easily solo this beast. Also note that if the creature is linked to any other creatures you will see a white ring around their feet. This is most often the case when the group word is listed.
Click the attack button or double click on the monster to begin combat. You and the monster will then smack at eachother until one of you dies. You can use your special abilities which brings up the fine art of combos. When I did a slash attack a combo icon appeared mid right on my screen. Several of my other abilities began flashing. I choose one and performed it. Then the first attack I had used begins flashing. I use it, thus completing the combo, and I do a extra big smackdown on my opponent.
When it dies your exp bar goes up. Sometimes you get a chest which is sometimes trapped, and sometimes a man eating chest, and sometimes its just good loot. Go figure
Combat in a nutshell, there you go.
Worlds of Warcraft : Combat in reality is similiar between both games. Color coordinated to let you know your chances of survival. Clicking on the combat button begins combat which begins a trading of blows until one of you two dies. You can use skills, etc during combat to gain an advantage.
I cant really think of two much to say on this subject for this game aside from its fast, it works, and I didnt notice anybugs in it aside from the one following annoyance : If a monster attacks you, you dont immediately return the attack. Your character just sits there and gets hit on until you either click attack or you die. Also if you can use a bow and shoot your enemy, this does not constitute the beginning of physical combat. When that monster gets up close you will get the "target is to close" message and then your character will simply stand there looking stupid waiting for you to hit the combat button.
Levelbuilding
EverQuest : You gain experience through combat, questing, and seeing landmarks of interest. When you level up you get a big flashy pointer that comes out of your character and shoots into the sky. You then immediately gain new abilities and all of your main skills raise immediately. Note thate while inbetween levels your skills will automatically rise as you use them.
At lvl9 I got a message saying I would not be able to progress to lvl10 until I completed my trainer profession quest. I scratched my head thinking "what quest?" Just to notice a new quest popup in my journal with a person to go see. That person has you perform several tasks each of which encompases one aspect of your profession. Example : As a scout when I went to my trainer he had me outinsult an npc(bard), backstab several opponents(rogue), and outright hunt and kill several other opponents(predator). Once all three were finished he sent me on an errand which involved being threatened and showed abit of the politics ingame amongst the factions and npcs of this game. Then I choose between bard, rogue, and predator. I choose predator and then my one final task had me sneak into a warehouse past a bunch of assasins intent in killing someone important in the city. I got upto the leader and killed him then did the sneak thing right back out the door. Walla, lvl10.
You can buy skills as I understand it, but I havent tried it yet. AS stated earlier in this article there are PLENTY of non combat oriented quests in this game, I was lvl10 and had never left qeynos..infact I had only wandered through two zones of the city speaking to every npc I could find. Leveling is abit slower in this game than WoW, and will appeal more to the long term players who want to enjoy the experience while enroute to the top.
Worlds of Warcraft : Same as above pretty much. Fight, Quest, Speak with npcs, find landmarks of interest to gain exp to levelup. Leveling is immediate with new abilities not being given...you have to buy them from a trainer of your profession. Leveling is VERY fast in this game. Which is nice for the time concious player who cant play for 8 hours a day like me
This game is also very much soloable. Find something to hard for you, fight some lesser stuff, or complete some other quests and come back to the hard stuff a level or two later only to find its much easier now heh.
PVP
EverQuest 2 : Dosent Exist, nuff said.
Worlds of Warcraft : Does exist in two forms. consentual and realm. Consentual can happen anytime you say yes or you challenge someone and they say yes. Realm as I understand it requires a minimum level to participate.
I'm not a big pvp addict so there isn't alot to say here. Though I will say that EQ2 immediately appeals more to me in this aspect since I don't care for pvp. I also noticed a friendlier community of ingame players in EQ2 and none of the l334 gamers that are much more abundant in WoW.
The World
EverQuest 2 : Zoned and instanced for missions. The city zones themselves tend to be small thus requiring zoning several times to get around the city itself. I suspect this to be necessary due to graphics of the game and the amount of players certain npc's will draw around them for quests and whatnot. The outside zones however are huge and sprawling for ever and ever it seems. Top notch graphics are abundant in this game, and speech is also been given to numerous monsters making combat often times hilarious.
Worlds of Warcraft : No loading screens anywhere which is a plus. WoW definitely has its own unique graphics engine which you will either hate or love. I enjoy it myself but after awhile find...something...lacking which then draws me back to EQ2. Don't ask my what it is because I couldnt say since I dont know. But there is something about this game which I can't quite get my hands around. Udunno. <shrugs>
Crafting
I cant really go into this since I don't really craft to much just yet in either game. I got a taste of crafting eq2 style during the tutorial and found it be be very streamlined, easy to use systemwise, and whatnot. Reminds me of SWG actually. Choose what you want to make from your crafting panel, choose which resources in you inventory you want to use, then make it. There are varing levels of sucess which in turn results in various levels of quality in the product. Note : About 4 days before release SOE broke the crafting system and pissed off have the beta testers heehee. They have since patched 2-3 times a day fixing it.
I havent tried nor do I know how to try to craft in WoW yet. More on this as I figure it out.
Summary
Ok Its not completely informed, and its just based on my experiences thus far, but thats what I have to say about that. If I had to choose and could only Play one game I suspect it would be EverQuest 2.
Reasons :
- I like its graphics better
- I dont mind zoning since each zone is top quality
- Speech
- I like its leveling system better, less hassel as far as learning new abilities
- It feels mature, a more adult like player population(due largely I suspect to the lack of pvp)
- The game dosent "hold my hand" heh. Once out of the tutorial you are free. WoW at lvl11 with my hunter still feels like my hands being held by the game heh.
Those are just afew but will say that I can play EQ2 for 8 hours straight, then play some more. I play WoW for 4 hours and find myself wanting to load up EQ2.
But no worries for me, I can and will be playing both
If anyone has any specific questions about either game fell free to post them in this thread and I will answer as quickly as possible!
<waves>