Lars over at MMOment of Zen just got to 80 in EQ2, managing eventually to finish the entirely solo, quest-driven run from 70 on that SOE thought we would enjoy. While there were plenty of people to help with the encounters that required more than one person in the first couple of months of the expansion, the numbers doing them now have thinned considerably. Also, this grind is not something you’d ever want to do again, and so alts often languish at the edge of RoK, because the grind is so punishing. Further, characters who’ve enjoyed leveling in groups all their career suddenly have to learn how to solo, so quick, fun group xp turns into a solo grind in largely abandoned zones.
As Lars points out, there’s a reason we play EQ2 instead of WoW. It’s for the groups.
We’re all hoping that SOE learned their lesson from RoK and that Shadows of Odyssey goes back to the same model the original game and all the expansions up to RoK used — a mix of solo and group content, with the group content being rewarding and a viable way to level.
9 thoughts on “EQ2: We don’t want RoK v2.0”
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Getting to -any- level in EQ2 was painful and hollow for me. Hehe.
I don’t blame the game, it’s my own fault for entering EQ2 expecting to see EQ1. Anyone doing that would be disappointed.
I really do enjoy a lot of the things they implemented to make the game more busy and in order to never leave a “bored” moment (ie: Collections!), but overall I screwed up in that game by wanting something that didn’t exist.
A frequently visited fault of mine, apparently.
I think it’s vital to be playing with friends. That won’t make a bad game good, but it can be the missing element that makes a game work for you. Having to do the RoK grind mostly all by myself nearly made me quit EQ2. It would have gone a lot easier if I’d had some friends to do it with.
I have half a dozen (or more) long term friends that I play EQ2 with and have played the game since launch. I’ve leveled two characters up to 80 in RoK. Thinking back, I can remember the culture shock from EQ. I have long felt that the fast way to level in EQ2 was to get a group in a dungeon (non-instance) zone. So I tried to get one for Karnor’s Castle at level 73ish. We were totally thrashed.
The other thing they changed with RoK is that mobs hit much harder, though not as frequently. Without strong levels and the much better gear available in Kunark, we couldn’t handle the heroic mobs in there. And you had to do the quests or buy mastercrafted stuff to improve your gear, since the overland drops were very odd, and rarely usable.
So leveling up by grouping in a dungeon would have to be done in some other dungeon, such as Kaladim. In another expansion! That really seemed odd. I guess that’s what you’re talking about. Once you get into the high 70’s you can group in KC or in Sebilis.
Have you done much in the way of instances? There are several that are really good. Maiden’s Chamber has some of the best tests of group tactics I’ve ever seen. Chelsith is just wicked hard with wanderers and adds, requiring full time concentration. Vault of Eternal Slumber isn’t quite as hard, but has a few unique tricks. Crypt of Agony is a bit easier, though hard to get to.
Yeah. Actually, once I reached 80, I joined an awesome guild called Clan of Shadows, but I failed the full membership vote so had to look elsewhere, which ended up with me largely giving up EQ2 from lack of a guild. CoS was amazing. It was exactly the guild I wanted all along, and it broke my heart when I didn’t get in. Anyway, I went to Delusions of Grandeur, and they were fairly cool in their own right, but then I got the Massively job and that pretty much took up my nights…
But having been part of the best guild on the server, my standards are a little too high for my current play style, and now when I log in, there’s nobody I know. I can’t STAND playing MMOs as single player games, perhaps this is why I couldn’t get into WoW.
@Toldain.. the instances, I agree, are wondful, fun, and challenge any group — however.
They’re also not something you can use to level up in RoK. Most groups won’t even look at you twice unless you’re 78+ (maybe, maybe lower if you’re a healer), and even then most don’t invite unless you’re already 80. Which still means you’ve got to do the utterly boring RoK quest solo grind to get anywhere.
Thanks for reading. 🙂 I couldn’t get into WoW for the same reason. People rarely grouped. When they did, they dropped group silently as soon as they got whatever they needed and ran off. Half of what I thought were group invites were actually duel requests. (/Kidding, I knew they weren’t group requests. But that was the only kind of game feature that involved more than one person that people in that game sent invitations out for freely…) And while I probably could learn to enjoy a single player RPG with a chat channel (which is what WOW essentially felt like for me), the content in the chat channels made me weep for mankind, so it didn’t even have that going for it.
City of Heroes has the best grouping scene I’ve ever seen. If we could just transplant whatever game features conspire together to create such a healthy grouping environment into a fantasy MMO, I’d be a happy man. But unfortunately for NCSoft, I’m not a big fan of the flying men in tights genre.
EQ and EQ2 are group-based games but there has to be a viable solo option and the older the game gets, the more important the solo option becomes. I’ve been through many different MMOs, starting in EQ, through DAoC, EQ2 and WoW. These were all at different stages of my life and the older I get, the more important it is to have the option to solo because I have less time to play. I’m not sure I could spare 3 hours a time to look for a group, assemble a group, go to the location of the camp and fight. If I have an hour in the evening I’d like to just log on, do some stuff and leave.
I wouldn’t suggest that EQ2 (or EQ) become solo-play paradises but the solo option is one of the main reasons why WoW continues to do well and why I haven’t managed to get back into EQ or EQ2. But the solo game has to be interesting as there’s nothing worse than grinding in a game by yourself (6 months of druid-kiting in EQ taught me that). By all means focus on the group game but give us something for those people with limited time to enjoy.
All the expansions had both solo and group content. RoK shifted that to mostly solo content — the group content was (initially) unrewarding. In the case of the first Kunark dungeon, Karnor’s Castle, experience fighting very hard hitting mobs that would severely stress a level 72 group, was 0.1%. Yes, you would need to kill one THOUSAND mobs in KC to level. Needless to say, KC was soon abandoned aside from people doing the one or two quests in the place. After awhile, they added in more Master chests, then they eased the difficulty of the mobs and raised (slightly) the experience earned from them. GU 47 will further make that zone more group-friendly, along with Chardok and Sebilis. Nameds will drop decent chests instead of some joke low level adept spell (or worse) most of the time.
SOE has been tuning RoK BACK for groups since its release. All I am asking is that they just forget trying to make a solo-only leveling curve (assuming they raise the level cap this time) and go back to the solo PLUS group content that they have had until now.
I suspect WoW’s popularity lies more than in the ability to solo to max level quickly. Admittedly, while you can solo to 70 in EQ2, it is not the fastest or the best way (but you CAN, and that’s important). Currently, the ONLY way to get from 70 to 80, is by soloing.
HI Tipa,
I enjoyed reading your EQ2 comments. I’m currently looking to hire one more EQ2 expert to write for our newsstand MMO magazine. If you know of anyone that plays the game every day, attends the Sony Fan Faire,etc, and would like to write for Beckett MOG magazine, please have them contact me at dkale@beckett.com
Thank you very much,
Doug