Neverwinter Nights - Capitalist Utopia

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph

Not at all. You can solo all your way through to level 70 if you want. And in fact, many do. There was a time (mid-2005), when people even petitioned to add more group mobs, because the little amount left was highly contested between too many groups.

EDIT: To give you a rule of the thumb: Most things (I'd say 2/3) outdoors are solo encounters, so outdoor areas are where you solo. You'll find some group mobs (tagged as such - how lame is that?) and the occasional raid encounter there though, watch out and get your adrenaline kicks! Dungeons like caves, mines, temples, crypts and such are largely group areas. You don't go there solo and if you do, you'll probably not last much farther than the entry area.



EQ2 has good content, and many of it, for all levels. Including raids and epic (heritage) quests. My main gripe is now, that levels fly by so fast that you're literally doomed to leave stuff out. When I played on the new PvP servers, I remember a night in Runnyeye (a mine full of gnolls), where I gained 2 levels in like 6 hours. That was pretty sad.

Oh that's a shame - it seems to have lost its differentiation and therefore I don't have much incentive to play it, unless I'm at a loose end, which doesn't seem likely for a good while.

[DrSpike]

I am right in thinking at the start EQ2 was billed as a game where the best xp was from grouping right?

[Harovan]

You still level faster when you group, especially in dungeons - first, since groups get an experience bonus anyway, and second, because some dungeons have an experience bonus as well. The gap between xp soloing and xp grouping has become smaller and less important, but still exists.

There's also a thing called "vitality". If you have it, you gain experience twice as fast as you would without it. You get a tick more vitality every hour (real time), and lose vitality as you gain experience. Meaning, the powerleveler, who does nothing but grind, will run out of vitality quickly and level slower then. The balanced player, who takes his time to smell the flowers, to interact with others, to adventure on his own or in a group and to tradeskill at times (tradeskills have their own pool of vitality) will practically always have vitality. Same goes for the more casual player. This leads to the general rule, that gaining experience is the more painful, the more you concentrate on it at the cost of other elements of the game. This is a good principle IMO, even more since you can painlessly get information on how many vitality you have at any given moment.

Another difference (I can't stress it enough) is the player base. I quote a post from a bunch of WoW convertites from the forum of my ex server. They seem to be a pretty cool and mature bunch:

Hello,

Me and a bunch of my close friends recently moved to EQ2 after playing WoW for a year or two. I am thrilled and excited about the maturity and the skill level of most players in this game; hopefully I have found a new home. My next objective is to find a fitting guild for our group. I find it very essential to the member and the guild, that their priorities are matched. So I will include a bit about our group, and hopefully I can get some information about any guild that feels we will be a solid addition to them.

Most of us were officers or senior members in our former guild and have a good understanding of what is necessary for a guild to work. But, sadly due to the nature of WoW and the crowd it attracted despite our hard work there was no hope for a true hardcore raiding guild of mature, skilled, and dedicated players on our server. That, coupled with the recent server problems and unbelievable lag, made the game very unpleasant. We are a group of skilled players that are willing to put in the time and work hard, work as a team, and do what it takes to meet our objective of conquering content.

Currently after a week, we are in our mid 20’s. I have no problem waiting until we are of appropriate level to join a well-matched guild. However, it will help us progress faster and meld much better with a guild if we grew under their wings. We are primarily playing support classes but if a class is in high demand, I doubt any of us would have a problem playing a role that will benefit the team more.

Thank you in advance for any feedback.

[DrSpike]

Thanks, that's useful info.

On the maturity point, I don't think I fully agree with you. In *all* games if you want good people to play with you have to hunt them out. Every single online game I've ever played (and this is a lot, believe me) has a lot of idiots in its playerbase. Thus, it really doesn't matter to me if the proportion overall is lower in EQ2 (which it might be, I'm not sure), as I'll still have to hunt, and find a good guild to play with. I don't think that hunt would really be any easier in EQ2 than it is in WoW.

Many of the endgame WoW guilds I'm thinking of applying to join are 18+, as it happens, and look (at first sight!) perfectly mature.

[Harovan]

I know you can find good people everywhere, if you look for them hard enough, even in Guild Wars (where the average playerbase was godawful by the way). There is, however, a difference, if you have to look hard for good people among a ton of lamers and doods and have to suffer the "noise" in the OOC chat (or turn it off with a loss of information), or if you just have some foul apples among a generally good community. In the latter case these are singled out pretty quick and usually leave fast. And, of course, we've had an invasion of doods after every christmas... for about 2 weeks only, thankfully. You guess who that was...

[Kassiopeia]

I have had the advantage of playing with the same bunch of people I know IRL in both WoW and GW - I would have probably quit in disgust very long ago if it weren't for the fact that I have readily-made company I can rely on to be mature and skilled.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
I know you can find good people everywhere, if you look for them hard enough, even in Guild Wars (where the average playerbase was godawful by the way). There is, however, a difference, if you have to look hard for good people among a ton of lamers and doods and have to suffer the "noise" in the OOC chat (or turn it off with a loss of information), or if you just have some foul apples among a generally good community. In the latter case these are singled out pretty quick and usually leave fast. And, of course, we've had an invasion of doods after every christmas... for about 2 weeks only, thankfully. You guess who that was...

I'm suffering the 'noise' atm.

I have to say (admittedly based on nothing except cynicism) that I would expect similar in EQ2.

[Harovan]

I played on 4 EQ2 servers: Lucan D'Lere, Antonia Bayle, Splitpaw and Darathar. The first was my main server and my community observations are based on it. Players on that server call it "Lucky D'Lere" not without reason. Antonia Bayle is another RP preferred server with a similarly good community (and a similarly low level of RP I might add). Splitpaw is the UK-PvE server. It's community is slightly worse than on the (US)-RP servers, but still much better than what I encountered in GW. Darathar is the UK-PvP server. I expected it to be ridden by doods. I was wrong.

[DrSpike]

Well maybe at some point in the distant future I'll check out the UK PvE server.

[duke o' york]

Well in Folderol I haven't found anyone who wasn't prepared to RP.
Sure, I played with a guy who had MS, so wasn't that good at talking, but his character was made so that he didn't hasve to, and that was cool too!
So far, I've made friends and enemies (although I've done the quest to put this right - just need to hand over the loot), and it's been an absolute pleasure!

[DrSpike]

I still think you should at least give GW a try.............

[duke o' york]

No thanks, but you're very generous!

I've been playing more Folderol this evening. I finally found some shuriken for my monk in the Bull Run, which was most gratifying, even if there are only 25 of them!

[DrSpike]

Why the GW hate? Tell us.

[duke o' york]

Sorry, I'm on the property ladder now so have to go and find some furniture to fill my new pad.

[DrSpike]

I'm on the property ladder and I have GW.