There’s Gotta Be A Balance

Recently I’ve been jumping back and forth between World of Warcraft and EverQuest in my MMO forays, and I have to say that I really feel that something is missing. Each game has it’s pluses and minuses, and I’m not truly in love with either of them, so there has to be a better way.

My Take on the First Few Levels of World of Warcraft

Warcraft, in its current incarnation, is simple. I can run through the first 10 levels in under an hour of barely cognizant gameplay. If I actually attended to the game, I could probably get through things in half an hour, and that’s even with reading the quest text.

The big thing I see in WoW is that the game is focused on questing, and I almost feel like my character is an afterthought. With the first 10 levels, I get a handful of spells – as a Druid – and for the most part, I barely get any flavor for what my character is gonna be like in the future of the game.

Everything seems to be focused on funneling me to a couple of quest hubs where the cows give out little missions where I need to collect a few things, kill a few things, or ‘investigate’ something by just showing up in the area. I never felt any fear of falling below 50% health, much less dying.

And I really don’t get much sense of what the game is gonna be about after the first 10 levels unless it’s solely about running from one quest hub to another performing meaningless quests that simply take up my time. Sure, it’s barely any time at all, but the quests are redundant and brain-numbing.

My Take on the First Few Levels of EverQuest

EverQuest is a whole different beast, and by beast, I mean this thing is monstrous. Actually, in the 7 or so hours I’ve been able to play the new EverQuest progression server, I’m managed to attain level 4.5. Yup, I’m not even level 5.

That’s not to say that my time has been spent well. On the contrary, I have found exactly one quest, and that was to hand the note I started the game with to the guy who saw standing in front of me when my character entered the world. Not exactly rocket science.

This quest then leads to a second quest that, from what I can tell, was supposed to lead me into the next room in the guildhall to meet someone else. That person was not there. I haven’t been able to find her, and after looking all over the map to find her, I gave up. I certainly hope there are some quests in EverQuest that I can complete, but for now, I’m relegated to being a monster hunter.

Ok, so I head out to fight. This is an entirely different thing than in Warcraft. If I pick the wrong creature to attack or if I get multiple monsters attacking me, I’m in deep trouble. Fortunately, I remembered, from way back when, that I could RUN to the guards, and they would fight off anything I pulled that was too tough for me. I just had to make sure to stay close.

So, with no quests to work on, all I could do was fight specific monsters that were not too difficult for me…or they might kill me. So I fought wasps and wolves, and skeletons, and orcs. One-on-one and I was pretty decent if I picked monsters that were blue or white. Yellow ones caused me significant trouble, so I stayed away from them, and the reds were right out.

I did this for hours upon hours, and I finally reached…level 4.5. Sure, each level felt like I was accomplishing something since I got a ton of new spells to try out but no new quests, no different monsters. Actually, I think more monsters were starting to show up as blue or white, but anything other than the wasps, wolves, skeletons, or orcs were red or yellow, and if I attacked one of those, I would soon be running for my life back to a guard.

So yeah…level 4.5 and I have been working at this for a week.

I and partway through, they even increased the experience I was getting for killing each monster, but it is a real slog.

It’s a Wrap

So what is the answer?

Warcraft is way too simple, and EQ is a long drawn out, mind-numbing, kill fest. I suppose I liked the fact that I got a bunch of new spells to try out in Everquest, but I also liked that Warcraft at least tried to provide some context to the killing.

Which one do I like better?

I’m not sure. Based on game time, I have played hundreds of hours in Warcraft over the years and relatively little of EverQuest. Right now, I’ve spent more time in EQ, but that’s only because I raced to level 10 in Warcraft in less than an hour while in EQ I’m not even to level 5. I suspect that I could easily reach max level in Warcraft and run end game content while I’m still trying to level up in EQ.

What I’d like to see is a game that gives you a sense of accomplishment at each level – like I’m getting with EQ but with direction similar to Warcraft.

When I think about it, I’d prefer the mission set up like Secret World, which in my mind is the best I’ve seen and couple that with spells and abilities at each level kinda like City of Heroes. The character customization of City of Heroes and the long term story of Lord of the Rings Online. That would be closer to the game I’d prefer to play.

Oh well, no one is making that game as far as I know, so I’ll just have to suffer with what we have for now.

Ramble 2020.02.38 | There’s Gotta Be A Balance