I love this!

The same applies when a guard walks by me, or I pass a random NPC, they look at me. I’m not being ignored!

That’s a great attention to detail moment that makes me feel a little like I’m in a living world.

I admit I use SOGA as I fine the artwork more appealing. But why does no one ever talk of the most superb avatar animations in MMO existence when in this debate?

Wolfshead, I’ve been meaning to write on your blog, but you made a few comments I read here first that I want to point out.

Wolfshead wrote:
This should not be what we as veteran MMO gamers are comfortable with, it should be about what EQ2 feels like from the perspective of a new subscriber.

then wrote:
I remember the original EQ where you were screwed in the endgame if you happened to choose the wrong class, so forgive me of being suspicious of SOE.

You contradict yourself in these two sentences in the same comment. So, which is it? Are you looking at the game from fresh eyes untainted by previous associations, or are you bringing in your existing biases and opinions? I think that’s the core issue here, and the reason people are taking you to task for the continuous comparisons to WoW. You’re not really looking at this from a fresh perspective, and it shows. (Not to say the rest of us could easily set aside our biases, though. Mine shine through quite completely on my own blog.)

I think you are holding me to an impossible standard here. I stated that I as a game designer was trying to simulate what a new subscriber to EQ2 might be thinking during their experience with introductory content. That person may very well have only played WoW before. I’ve made the point continually that part of what I was trying to do was to see how a WoW subscriber might perceive EQ2. I and others also made the point that it’s folly to ignore 11.6 million players currently subscribing to WoW. It’s would be unthinkable to analyze EQ2 without measuring the impact of WoW.

There are lots of people who’ve chosen classes in WoW that find they aren’t particularly useful in the WoW endgame. I feel that is a legitimate question that a potential EQ2 newbie would want to ponder when deciding to choose a class. I’m not sure how stating this hurts my case.

For me one of the core and innate abilities of a good game designer is having empathy for your players. Being able to put aside your own wants, needs and elite skills and think about the situation of the player. The ability to transpose your mindset into the mindset of the average gamer is a rare skill indeed. I don’t claim to have it but at least I tried to approximate that via the article. Take it for what it’s worth :)

Let me give another example:
However, how does one gather items if one doesn’t level up? I’ve seen most resource nodes usually near enemy camps in hostile areas?

Again, you’re speaking as the veteran here. You want to know everything about the game, and you want to know it at the start! A less experienced person is going to go in and experience the game. Sure, you’re not going to be harvesting the highest level resources a few hours after making your first character. But, as you learn the game, you’ll figure out how you can get resources. In LotRO, I’ve taken my level 26 character into areas that are level 40+ to collect resources. You could do the same thing in EQ2 once you know the game better.

The experiment is over for the purposes of my article and I’m now here replying as “me” not “Joe Newbie” to some comments about crafting where it’s been said that you can level crafting up independently of your character via combat. Of course a new player may not know that is possible or not possible. Speaking for me here, I’m very intrigued about other aspecsts of EQ2 beyond the newbie experience which explains my questions re: crafting.

And, one last big then I’ll stop hanging you with your own words. (At least on here. ;)
Because it felt tedious. You spend a lot of time looking at the casting bar/progress bar when you are casting or gathering. I felt it was a common theme in EQ2, that everything is created to be a laborious timesink. Perhaps it goes away but why torture and frustrate a new player with long casting times for spells and abilities?

You see tedium, I see a more thoughtful pace. I loved EQ2’s combat much more than WoW’s because it was slower paced, and there were more options. You a wide variety of abilities instead of a handful of abilities that get upgraded again and again. If you increased the speed of combat in EQ2, then all those options would be overwhelming. Again, you’re looking through the eyes of an expert. “I know how to push buttons, so let me push the damned buttons faster!” EQ2’s combat doesn’t work that way for a good reason, and it becomes apparent at higher levels.

Some really good points and I don’t disagree. EQ2 does have it’s own pace and that’s fine for some. All I would say is that if you look at casting times 30% would not cause an NGE apocalpyse and radically change the MMO. Still I think it would mitigate some of that “waiting for the spell bar to finish” sense of tedium that I experienced.

Blizzard recognizes this (sorry to mention them again…) and you’ll notice that for the first few levels most spells have very short cast times which slowly creep up in a few levels. So it’s not just me saying this. The idea is to hook the player and get them attached to the MMO as fast as possible.

The irony here is that the combat seems tedious at the lower end exactly for the newbies you want to represent. They’re not masters of hotbar combat. They don’t want to be rushed into pushing the wrong button at the wrong time and feeling like they fucked up. It’s us experts that are happy to barrel forward and hope for the best, knowing we’ll be able to pick ourselves up if we suffer a setback.

Have you been at a focus test of young video gamers lately? Their skills blow me away and they should not be underestimated. Trust me, I’ve seen kids ages 7-9 who we brought in to test some handheld games who play Halo and Gears of War and other FPS games that are twitch fests show up at professional focus testing centers. They are simply going to log into EQ2 and find it a snooze fest.

I think that what you wanted to do was great: look at how a game holds up under the scrutiny of a newbie player. But, I think you’re bringing a lot of your existing notions to the table. I’d love to see you try again, though, because I think it can truly be insightful.

I appreciate the compliments. I spent a considerable amount of time doing the research and writing the article. It was rewarding in its own right and I’m glad that many people found it fascinating and it seems to have sparked some good discussions. I wanted it to be informative and helpful. Interestingly enough, I’ve found that I’ve learned quite a bit about an aging MMO and how communities react to things. Thank you again for insightful comments and advice!

But we all know it’s fun to bash something that people like and get them riled up. Just ask Tobold.

– It was REALLY nice to be away from blogland and the RSS feeds, and have some mental peace and quiet for a chance. All this sturm und drang we shake, rattle and roll… it’s all in a teacup. An interesting one, but a teacup nonetheless.

– Amen, sister. I have 3 (almost 5) level 80 crafters and no adventuring chars over 58. Hell, I was 70 crafting back when I was 30 adventuring, and harvesting quite happily in level 70 zones. So I died a few times… so what? It’s not impossible. And EQ2 is one of the very few games that absolutely does not force me to adventure in order to craft. That is a rare and precious thing, especially since the majority of players STILL think crafting is that button you click when you can’t find a group to go run a dungeon instance with.

I seem to have lost my taste for polemic in the last week or two. Thanks for writing this rebuttal. ;)

(Oh and AFAIK there is no auto-attack timer bar in the base UI and there really, REALLY should be. I’ve played nearly 18 months in my couple of EQ2 stints and it’s only recently that I got any kind of understanding of what auto-attack does, what a huge part it plays in combat (for some classes) and why you shouldn’t mash buttons so fast you never get one in. Anyway, there *are* modded auto-attack bars available.)