Stagnant

[Pojodan]

I'm at the point where there just isn't anything else I want to do that hasn't been done.

I don't like raiding, which kills most of GoD for me.
I don't have the patience or money to multi-box.
My upgrade options both it terms of gear and AAs are such tremendously minor upgrades I don't see it as changing the game for me at all.

As it stands I havn't loged in since about 2 weeks ago when I went and got CoH which I'm nearly sick of already.

I may have to drop out of the MMORPG market till WoW so that I can repair some of my burt edges.

[ghostryder]

A lot of the trouble with getting board is the end game design. Think about it for a second. EQ is basically a roleplaying game, but it is the only RPG I've ever played where your options and abilities actually narrow as you level rather than the tried and true level to get more powerful and be able to do more.

Once you past 60, your upgrade choices stop unless you raid, most of your hunting choices are confined to LDON or a handful of boring zones leaving you with regrets of ever getting to 65.

Once I tired of raiding, which didn't take that long, I rerolled a BST on FV for a change.

Here, it's one toon per account, toons can't be transferred from other servers, languages are active, OOC is active in only a handful of zones and most items are not no drop, which serves both the raider (where he can now sell when he upgrades rather than having it sit in the bank unused) and the casual player who now can actually get some decent gear at 65.

Since the ruleset has pretty much eliminated twinks and beggars, it's kinda like going back to the early days of EQ- you can't understand anyone outside of your race, your naked and penniless. At 50 I still wan't wearing anything worth more than 500p other than the Soltice earring that took all of the 7k I had saved for those 50 levels and still was at least 5 levels away from making any decent plat to upgrade.

I was enjoying it til the DX9 fiasco, where the targeting is still messed up. I still can't target beyond a hill or rock, or a mob behind another mob- to me this is fundamental and I'm amazed there's not more outcry over it.

So when I had read a review on Anarchy Online and the new Shadowlands expansion I decided to give that game another try. Like everyone else I had tried it on release and quickly left because of the bugs but after 2 years most of those are squashed- hell, you can even target mobs!

Although the game has a very high learning curve, and is simular to EQ in a lot of ways, it's really less and more.

Contrary to the cookie cutter classes in eq, where equipment is really the differing element, in AO there's a myraid of stats to be decided each level and where to spend them- these are called IP's. and everything has IP requirements from spells to weapons and armor- and each class and race has cheaper IPs in certain areas and costly IPs in others.

It's a nice system that makes powerleving very hard, which I think is a good thing, and tweaking almost impossible until your very well schooled in the complicated implant choices and IP choices.

The big problem I have with AO though, dispite the huge learning curve, is the player base, which is much younger. This leads to a lot of profanity in the chat window, KS'ing and trains to a degree I've never seen in EQ.

It may change in the higher levels (there's 220) but I doubt I'll make it that high before WoW and EQ2 hit.

I intend to try both, and have more high hopes for WoW rather than EQ2 simply because of Sony's track record but until then AO is a good deversion as I can't bring myself to play EQ until targeting returns to what it was- which I doubt will ever happen.