Originally posted by U4-Welcome
I thought about playing WoW, but my first experience with MMORPGs, Ragnarok Online, has been less than addicting : find monsters, kill them until you don\'t have any health left, go heal, repeat. When treasure is high enough, buy new equipment, then repeat again. Organize a party with a priest so he can heal you and cut down on the time you spend leveling.
Is WoW any different ?
The basic model of most MMORPGs* is pretty much kill monster, get loot, kill better monster, get better loot (with some adding kill player, get whatever to that formula). Somehow, some games manage to make that pretty compelling. Though it seems any game will have something of a following, even if a small one.
I started on Asheron\'s Call I, and played that for about two and a half years, partly cause it was cheaper than long distance when my husband and I lived in different countries. ;-> I did stress betas on AC2, Star Wars, Horizons, Lineage II, City of Heroes, and now EQII and WoW. So far, WoW is just plain the most fun I\'ve had on one of these things. Most of the time when I\'m playing it, it\'s to have fun, not to grind to get a level/ability/item or what have you.
One cool thing about both WoW and EQII is the heavy emphasis on quests. EQII has so many quests, people complained when they reduced the maximum number of unfinished quests you could have to 50! In both games, at least at the lower levels I\'ve tried, you can level up your character and its equipment primarily through quests. If anything, sometimes you\'re holding back from moving on to higher areas/monsters because you want to finish up your quests.
Visually, EQII has gone for a sort of realistic high fantasy look. The graphics are designed to stay sharp looking for at least a couple of years - I think even the highest end computers currently available can\'t run the graphics with all options turned to highest settings. WoW\'s graphics are more modest in design, and slightly cartoony as someone said. But they\'re also very stylistic, so while they aren\'t photo-realistic, they\'re very attractive and add a lot of character and ambiance.
Sound-wise, I\'d give the edge to EQII. WoW\'s sound is great, EQII is just a little better. Most notably, virtually every NPC speech is completely voiced in EQII, while in WoW NPCs mostly just do greets and goodbyes.
What I like about WoW...
Every race really feels unique and like it has a personality and history, not just some different stats or abilities to min/max. The homelands each starts in, their initial quests, their music, the voices, all of this reinforces the nature of each race. EQII\'s got some of this, after a joint newbie area everyone splits off into a good or evil biracial ghetto zone, but it\'s not nearly as engaging as what WoW\'s done.
Good and evil are relative in WoW. There are two factions and different opinions about things, but no group self-describes as evil. I think very few people who do evil things think they\'re evil, and it\'s nice to see a fantasy world approached with the idea that the evil isn\'t always obvious, or maybe there isn\'t even an absolute evil.
EQII seems to be the opposite, with good/evil being what things in the world are characterized around. You\'re either skipping along in the sunny, helpful city, or lurking in the dreary shadow city.
Not that moral absolutes aren\'t fun sometimes, too.
I think WoW has the edge for soloers, although that may be different at higher levels. You can solo in EQII, but there\'s a larger chunk of content even from the early levels that\'s for groups.
Where EQII does lose me more seriously is there is still some grinding. The zone/load screen aspect of EQ is alive and well, and when you\'re just trying to go between two neighbourhoods to deliver a message and you have a big load screen in both directions, that really takes you out of things. The crafting system is also somewhat grindy. It takes a lot of time, you have to go to a special area, and there\'s way too many ingredients and components to find/buy, particularly given the limited inventory space.
* The most different MMORPG I know of is
A Tale in the Desert II. I meant to try the beta of ATITDI, but I was distracted by other things then. There\'s no combat, though there are plenty of other challenges to meet, and player choices shape the direction of the game. The reason it\'s now Tale II is that the story of Tale I actually ended and they moved on to another one, which is pretty different and neat in itself.
