This entry is the result of a line of thoughts that spans various message boards and most of what I wrote on this site in the last days and also what I’m going to write for the next.
Again this is a (dry) analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of both games from an objective point of view (so without personal comments of preference). With the aim of looking forward though. Observing and learning what happens has no use if you don’t draw concretely useful conclusions for the future. And this is my goal.
In regards to the title of this article it’s rather obvious the link to what is written below. World of Warcraft already won the first round and probably also the followings. Smedley already congratulated Blizzard for the success, hiding the hostility and exhibiting a big smile. In a similar way Kerry did the day after he lost the elections against Bush.
What is dangerous, as I explain at the end, is the desire of emulation.
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This links directly to the discussion about WoW endgame because all the guidelines and the things I wrote on that thread reflect directly here:
Feltrak:
Nagafen will not speak to anyone that does not know the draconic language, so his giant buddy sends you on a quest to learn the language. The quest involves traveling throughout the entire world and finding 26 clickable items sitting around every zone. From city zones to level 20 experience zones to level 45 experience zones. Our guild spent about 2-3 weeks running all over the world, running our mouse over every thing that looked like a book, scroll, or bag on the ground. Some of the runes were placed in such insane places like on top of a tent in the Feerrott.
This is another demonstration of SOE focusing on Fun(®) gameplay. How can they claim that their aim is to deliver a fun experience when they blatantly use unfun, frustrating tricks?
Raph Koster:
We go into every game with the goal of avoiding grinds. :) Really, it surprises me how many people think developers are willfully ignoring everyone–it’s really not that so much as how easy it is to lose sight of what you’re trying to do.
This comes from a completely different discussion but it plugs here. They *know* that what they are going to offer is crap but they do nothing at all to avoid these elements.
This is, again, deliberate. No excuses.
Feltrak:
Guilds: The guild system is awesome. My guild is on their way to achieve magic carpets as a ride through Norrath via the leveling system. Leveling up your guild allows you to get items from status merchants, and lowered cost on other things. Also, there’s nothing better walking around through town and having every Guard salute you, or bow to you. Sony did this well, as it allows the end game to not only be raiding, but achieving guild status and prestige as well.
I underlined this “merit” on my website. It’s a direct advantage that EQ2 has over WoW where the guild layer can be directly ignored like any other form of community involvement.
This is why, in the other thread, I wrote:
“The point of an online game is to live in an alternative world to build something there. To have a sense, an impact. Maintain a presence. All these things happen (even if still weakly) in all the major mmorpgs.
But WoW isn’t a world in the hands of a community. It’s a single-player world with cooperative experiences. The type of impact is often just a form of griefing and communal goals are very loose concepts.”
Point taken for EQ2.
Raiding: Raids in Eq2 are very very well done. Some of the encounters that we’ve come across are amazing. The MOBS are flexible enough that multiple different strategies can work for them, but you have to perform that strategy flawlessly to succeed. With a 24 person limit to raids, you can’t just send in 50 people to slaughter a mob and hope you can do enough damage before it kills everyone (zerging.) Alot of strategy comes down to group setup and key classes, as most all of the traditional eq1 group buffs can not be distributed to other groups.
This plugs in the discussion about the difficulty. Again this underlines basic differences in the design approach of the two games.
In WoW everything is trivialized to be *accessible*. There are no group restrictions, powerlevelling is tolerated and encouraged to an extent, the monsters always drop their loot no matter of the gaps in levels, no restrictions in the access to the instances.
All these steps are founded on other basic elements, for example the “tagging” system allow higher level players to assist and babysit lower level players so that they can get their full reward even bypassing completely the difficulty of the encounter as it was planned.
In general there are no rules in WoW to prevent the players to bypass the difficulty of a goal. On the contrary, the powerlevelling behaviour is often encouraged and is probably the main purpose of a “guild”.
EQ2 is directly opposed to these concepts. I believe that this is *evident*. A few levels and a trivial mob doesn’t give you anymore experience nor loot. In a group the difference in levels directly affects the difficulty of the encounter and the relative reward. Encounters are locked and you cannot get assisted. Grouping between similar level players is strongly encouraged by the system, grouping players in a wider gap is penalized. The instances are strictly controlled about who can enter and how they are experienced. And so on.
Now can you see that they follow two, diametrically opposite, patterns?
WoW has its main keyword in the accessibility. Everything is possible, never impossible. The difficulty can be easily bypassed if you so choose, always. You have control over the rules. You have a direct control over the difficulty of the game. Everyone is allowed in.
EQ2 has its main keyword in the challenge. The experience is always aimed. The developers set standards and rules and the players need to go through a set condition and “win” it. It’s all about beating a difficulty, so it’s always about a challenge and a reward. The gameplay is the opposite of “accessiblity”. Why? Because EQ2 operates a selection. You can continue to play only if you learnt the lesson.
In WoW you can bypass a lesson at any time. Just call your buddy level 60. (again accessibility). In EQ2 you bump into “walls”. If you want to proceed you need to endure it and win the situation as it was set by the developers. This becomes often boring or frustrating because:
1- The lesson isn’t really interesting
2- The lesson is too hard
In WoW you can choose what is interesting, what is too hard (so you “cheat”), what you should repeat, what you want to jump etc…
In EQ2 the fun isn’t in the hands of the players and strictly depends on the Vision(â„¢) and the talent of the devs. If the content sucks you’ll directly hate the game because you have no control over it to adjust it to your likings.
With all this I just want to underline again that the two games are founded on completely different patterns and goals. One isn’t directly better than the other “by design”. As the development continues, they both have different paths to follow to become better games. What is *dangerous* is to not understand the nature and the scope of these game. Dangerous and harmful is when I hear that EQ2 is starting to move to “feel more like WoW”.
The biggest mistake is on this superficial point of view that will only damage directly the game when the aim should be about *consolidating the differences* to offer a different product, at the same time addressing those strongly UNFUN and broken parts of the game that every player continues to point out, like the one at the beginning of this message.