I came from Lucan D'Lere "RP preferred" server where NO ONE RP'ED!! Community consisted of flaming Rp'ers over the General OOC chat, and arguing about politics. I didn't *want* to group with most of the people because most of the people just got me killed. Oh you CAN solo... but it takes way too damned long, and you don't get any decent drops.
I liked the Iksar thing, A LOT. I wish I still could play Iksar in WoW, which is impossible of course.
In WoW I'm on Cenarion Circle, an RP realm where a lot of people RP. We hold RP gatherings several times a week,lore telling, peaceful walks between factions, even a lot of the PvP is RP'ed out later on the boards we have. I have a nice group of friends there, on BOTH sides of the fence... I did not have this on EQ2 and I am now on WoW as long as I was on EQ2.
So the Community argument doesn't work for me.
The l33t d00dz argument doesn't work for me either. L33t d00dz are reported for breaking RP rules in CC, and asked to transfer to either PvE or PvP servers.
The economy is pretty healthy in WoW, unlike what I saw happening in EQ2 when I left. And yes -- go look on the official boards, people are definately complaining about the economy and how it's set up right now.
They just had a BIG update that added more items, more quests, fixed a lot of bugs, added new dungeons and instances, more mobs, and soon they will also release the Battlegrounds/Honor System patch...and unlike SOE's "Adventure Packs"...I get all this for free. These aren't even Expansion packs yet and still they add so much to the game already.
So the argument of "not enough content added" doesn't work.
Yes *some* of the servers go down for maitenence a lot. My server has been down for emergency maitenence 2 times since I started, and of course down 2 times for updates. EQ2 has maitenence every day at 7 am. Hm.
No, the server always down argument doesn't work for me.
To me it sums up like this:
SOE released EQ2 waaay too early. They DID cut out a lot of promised material (trust me I watched the little premiere they had out a couple years back showing armor, facial features, etc etc ) It COULD have been such a great game!! But got a lot of things right, but then ...just so totally missed other things.
And now they post an ad (I wonder how many people have seen it, was amusing) hitting Blizzard below the belt in a desperate attempt to win back some customers.
No, EQ2 is not a BAD game. Many people enjoy it, and I'm totally fine with that. But it lives up to almost no one's expectations of what it COULD have been and SHOULD have been. Something about the game just wasn't *fun* for me after level 15... and plus SOE's horrible customer service finally did it in for me.
Is WoW perfect? Nope. But I enjoy it, and so do many others. I love my server. All those griping about "no community" should try an RP server if they have any creative ability, maybe you'd like it better. Being a Troll Hunter is insanely fun, PvP is totally up to YOU if you want to do it or not (unless of course you go to a PvP server) and it's fun too. Money is not insanely hard to make or keep, stuff is pretty affordable, they add new content often with more on the way (and I would definately imagine several expansions being planned) and it's just *fun* for me. ME being the key word. If you try it and don't like it great, but don't knock it before you try it, and don't say it's "teh suxx0rz" just because you don't like it.
Edited, Sat Mar 26 15:02:40 2005 by Ivven