[Sneaky]

I played EQ2 for several months (usualy 4-5x a week, several hours a time) with a few breaks then and when and belonging to the "not interested in raiding, but enjoying competative, engaging and challenging gameplay" faction.

When I stoped playing, I had a 65 Dirge, a 65 Bruiser and a 65 Defiler. Additionally the usual array of 5 alts.


I unsubscribed for several reasons:

- boring combat (you could play eyes closed once the fight started, no matter which character - I tried almost all classes, putting alot of time into 3 "very different" ones - by job-description - to make sure I didn't "miss something")
- Game-Performance from sluggish to "grinding to a halt" on settings that didn't make my eyes sore on a PC that still plays most new games just fine on "high"
- The impression that the Devs of the game didn't know what to do with most classes (i.e. no need for crowd control in avrgr groups - even after the great "CC-nerf" to "make chanters valuably by nerfing everyone else")
- Very few ways to improve your effectiveness by "being a better player"
- almost no interesting items for someone only doing PuG and small guildgroups (I don't like raiding, so dunno about that - don't realy care, either)
- too few different armor models (changing textures to make something "new" is so last milenium)


The most important ones for me from all these were the boring combat and lack of ability to "shine". I play plenty of other games that would not realy win a beauty contest, give only momentary rewards (or none other than "You Win") but they still keep me returning again and again to play with and against others.

But EQ2s combat felt so uninspired, bland, 1234561234560123456, unchallenging and unrewarding that it became a chore pretty quick. Group setup almost didnt matter. Almost any player would do anytime, as long as they weren't completly retarded and controlling their chars by banging their heads on the keyboard. You could "single pull" almost anywhere. Not that you would, you often tried to grab a few mobs to AE away. Debuffs almost didn't matter - and while you were ... appreciating the buffs on you, it's doubtful you'd have noticed if half of them would wear off mid fight - unless you maximized your buff windows which easily could take up quarter of the screen in a normal group.

While EQ2 has a "concentration" system for buffs, most classes dont realy have to make a whole lot of choices on which buff to use or who to buff. For normal groups a Bard's buffs, for example, barely made a difference (other than in-combat-regen). So the hardest choice to make was something like "hm, let the tank take 1% less damage or give the group 0.5% more melee damage". And that for a class that was way down the "DPS tiers" and who's players sit 95% of the fight there watching chat while aimlessly pushing some buttons to make the impression -maybe even on themselfs- that they are actually helping.

Even healing wasn't engaging the least. Reactives/Wards up. Count to 25 and recast. Repeat. If that wasnt enough you "weave" your two reactives. If that's not enough you throw in some patchheals every x seconds (its very predictable and doesn't change much as long as the mob's level relative to your tank/whoevertakesdamagetoday doesn't increase/decrease).


Rambling, but whatever, it's late and no critique, however well written will manage that the guys at SOE get that game on the right tracks (for players like me, which I'd guess make up a far larger part of the total "MMO-Gamer-Population" that whatever EQ2 has left). Lost cause. Next.