Thursday, June 21, 2007

Two Games Enter, One Game Leaves

God I loved "Beyond Thunderdome". I don't care what critics and Road Warrior lovers say. Anyway...

I'm still testing the waters of Everquest 2, while forging onward in LotRO with my Champion, Begud (Silverlode server, look me up). The games, for all intents and purposes... are pretty damn similar. In a post WoW MMO world, that doesn't shock me. What shocks me is that I actually want to play them both.

One would think that after 5 years of fantasy online games, I'd be sick to death and not want to log into either. But I'm a sucker for elves and dwarves and whatnot. The main differences for me in my enjoyment of both games are thus:

- LotRO has the lore and the setting I love, coupled with ease of solo-play and plenty of extras to keep me entertained. Also they've got a great young community going. I also love my Champion. He's likely the only class in the game I like, but I <3 him a LOT. His damage happy efforts alone could keep me coming back to whack foozles.

- EQ2 on the other hand doesn't interest me from a setting standpoint, at all. I wasn't into EQ1, so the story of Norrath doesn't really matter to me the way Tolkien's world does. In fact, I doubt any game's settng will stack up to LotRO's for me. But that's besides the point. What does keep me hankering to log into EQ2 is the sheer amount of things one can do. Meaningful crafting, swift leveling, plenty of collection quests, guild leveling, etc and so on and so forth. It's a big bunch of quality content to experience. Oh yeah, and the people in EQ2 are a great bunch just like LotRO.

In short, they're both great. But the main difference is the Lore in LotRO, and the amount of content in EQ2. I'm not sure what my decision will be when I have to choose one next month, but right now I'm leaning towards LotRO. The fun of being there as Middle-Earth opens up and not trying to "catch up" to the expansion in EQ2 is pulling me in that direction.

We shall see. This is Master Blaster, reporting for Bildo's Blog. :)

EDIT: Let's not even get into the fact that Pirates and Gods and Heroes are due out in a couple months. I'm an MMO addict, I'd be lying if I said those two weren't looming over my head this whole time.

2 comments:

Cameron Sorden said...

I don't even know if being into the lore helps EQ2... I played EQ for years and loved it, but EQ2 feels SO different to me. Partly due to mechanics and partly due to the fact that it's set hundreds of years later, I just didn't get the same EQ vibe from it, even while exploring GFay and BB.

Take that as you will.

Bildo said...

Then, hmm. I really do wonder what it is about the Lore in EQ2 that doesn't attract me? I'm usually all over that sort of thing but for whatever reason with EQ2, I could care less.