machineman said:
What I want to know is... what about the people that DID NOT play EQ1 on day 1? How do they feel about this game? They don"t have some attachment to reliving those years... so their opinion on a modern MMO is as valid if not more so than "old school" players.
If you take the first 10 levels of WoW and the first 10 levels of Vanguard, and ask the, lets say 7 million players for whom WoW was the first MMO they"ve played, which do you think most would prefer?
It"s not even a contest - the fit, finish, polish and fun of WoW is captivating the minute you begin playing. Vanguard, after you stutter around to get your bearings, you can go start slaughtering stiff looking mobs w/ flat grey textures.
And don"t say the games are two different beasts - the first 10 levels the games are identical in terms of goal and gameplay.
I know I know - "But Sigil wasn"t going for WoW numbers yadda yadda" - well, they"ve already admitted they"d be stupid not to copy some of WoWs features. The main problem is that to the majority of the players that come from WoW as their first MMO the exposure to Vanguard in the first hour kills it for them - this extrememly bad word of mouth isn"t exactly a good thing.
Anyway, I can safely say they are not getting any subscription money from me... I am not interested in taking steps backwards, just to get a warm and fuzzy about years past.
This is 100% anecdotal, BUT I have a friend that I work with. Never even heard of an MMO until we started working together, caught me surfing forums, updating magelo etc. so we began to talk about it.
Long story part skipped the point is he and I, along with a few other co-workers decided to play wow together. This was his first mmo ever, only online game I think he played before was Quake. At first he didn"t like it that much. I think it was too much to take in or something. He wanted to be king shit, specced wrong(all out dmg with no concept of group play etc). Which didnt affect anything until we starting hitting 50"s and 60. Hes my friend and my goal in WoW was never to be leet raider like EQ because I knew I couldnt do that anymore. So when we grouped I didn"t really give advice or tell him what to do, etc. I didn"t give a shit, we would joke in chat, etc and have a good time. Once we hit 60 however we were struggling in the instances, he started to get really frustrated, always dying(sp?) from pulling aggro, never healing(he was shm by the way but for the most part irrelevant)...he wanted to tank, nuke, be the best. He even downloaded those stupid mods that shout headshot and shit when you shit, all out not a strategic mmo player. Finally he got real annoyed and couldn"t take it anymore, wanted to quit.
I convinced him to give it another shot and that it would be better, so I started to lead the group, pull, give orders a bit etc. I"m sure hed say I was a little bit of a dick, but I was sick of dying all the time too. Now he"s one of those wanna be badass players /sigh(what did I create, shame on me) who rags on n00bs or whatever. Joined some "leet"(read as doing ok in BWL) guild. He loves wow. Fucking loves it. To the point where getting him to go out to a bar on Friday night is now difficult because he"ll bitch the whole night about missing DKP or something fucking lame. Days past I quit WoW(no disrespect just wasnt for me and with the last of my friends gone and no desire to raid 5 days a week, let"s face it, I didnt have shit to do but grind timbermaw).
In comes VG. I preech a bit about how it"s similiar to EQ, which I loved. Give the various reasons I think it"s different/better etc. I pitch the game. I get him to try it with me. And once again, the story is almost like it began all over. We made characters together one night, he was having all sorts of hardware problems(yea yea, we all know). Funny part is he has a better computer than me and I was fine. So Im convinced VG just has some fucking issues with certain configs or something. We made it to level 8 or so in a nights play, call it 4-5 hours after work. He gave me his comments and opinions, and from what he said I came to the conclusion that he was poorly influenced by me. For the 4-5 hours we played I was constantly explaining shit in group, sorta leading the way etc.. I told him to play to level 10 without me around, just like he did WoW for the first time.
He did. He didn"t like it. He may play with me 1-2 days a week because we are friends, but he will continue to be addicted to WoW.
HIS reasons were as follows, again this is from him to me, and then my wording so something may be lost in translation...
First off, overwhelmed. He said he made his character(orc) started on some boat burning down near an outpost and before he could even gather his UI and controls he was attacked and slaughtered. I of course laughed, but only because I"ve been there.
He also complained that every time he turned his screen went black(I doubt THAT happened but he probably had some grapghical shit he didnt want to deal with is the bottom line I gathered). He has 7900SLI setup, with maybe a AMD something, not sure, I can ask him. It should run fine since my lesser PC does and I read about others on this board doing fine, but whatever.
He whined about how it was too tough, and that"s almost exact wording. Said he had quests, but couldn"t even complete them without help, asked if he had to group for everything down the road. Funny part about that, is I actually see that as a benefit, I PREFER to group, hate playing solo, its boring. But clearly he only wants to group to do "leet dungeons". Not for his "down time soloing".
He DID like:
That when he did group with some guy he found, he said certain spells would light up when the other guy did something, or how he did more damage if he cast at a certain time. He said he likes the graphics when they weren"t killing his computer. He liked the unqiueness of his class.
Now, overall, I don"t think VG will be his game. Maybe over time those 1-2 days a week he plays just to hang out with me will become 3-4 etc...I don"t know. But atm, hes still addicted(badly too) to WoW.
Take that for what it"s worth.