1-70 in this game is probably the best pve experience right now.

[Iceyx]

I've played a lot of MMO's, everything from ultima online to WoW.  But I think in it's current state EQ2 was the most fun to level in. 

There are so many dungeons, and actual motivation to do them (aa points).  I brought a group over from WoW, and we barely touched quests.  It was really refreshing to just explore dungeons for EXP.  It wasn't even grinding, we literally just went from dungeon to dungeon exploring everything and moving on.  The only quests we did were the first 10 levels and whatever we ran into during the dungeons. 

What made this really an awesome experience, is as we dungeon crawled, we leveled almost perfectly.  We entered wailing caves, and exited at the perfect level for stormhold, then on to fallen gate ect.  The scale of the monsters was done really well too. We started off fighting bats, and ended killing dragons and junk in KoS. 

The exp was almost too fast, since we did manage to miss a few zones.  A small tweak there and the pacing would have been perfect. But there was always a dungeon to head to "next" so it kept the flow going.

There aren't many mmo's out there that let you just dungeon crawl to level. 

They all quit when we hit kunark though ;p Suddenly old world style wow questing popped up and everyone hated it.

[Payneal The Great]

In PVE EQ2 has always been king, and when it comes to overall MMO experience EQ2 remains king! Unless your primary goal in MMO's is to PVP, nothing on the market even comes close to EQ2.

[Ealthina]

For pure PVE experiance I prefer LOTRO for its depth and strory lines, and its crating is the best in MMO history.  I prefer grouping and raiding in eq2 far more..  SO I bounce betweeen the two equally depending on my mood at the time.

[Maebus]

Similar thing happened to my group.  We played the game for about 2 years loving it.  Then RoK and we all quit from the constant quest grinding.  Don't mind questing but we like to mix it up.  It sounds like the latest expansion has a solid mix and you can play how you want to a point.

We came back about a year ago and just took our medicine and got through RoK.  We still love leveling alts through the 1-70 content though as much as possible .

[Tehom]

I got so burned out doing quests to level from 70-80 on so many characters I just couldn't bring myself to do any solo quests this time at all before I hit 90, and still kind of avoid them. I'm just glad they made dungeon grouping a viable alternative to questing.

[Leemeg]

Agrees that RoK removed the nice balance between Quests and leveling. After that one it all is about grinding quests. The quest itself isn't much to talk about either.  In RoK you could also jump forward alot with the questing. But now in SF you just have to start at the begning of the line, and do one and one quest until the end. 100% linear. If you drop out and skip one quest, the quest line stops.

[standupwookie]

LOTRO is a pretty basic game.  They got exactly what they were trying to develop.  It only had one major change, and that was the change or percentage based skills to number based skills.  Other than that, it's pretty much the same game it was when released except for the Moria switch over to grinding instead of questing.

But it is not a deep game.  The story is fine, EQ has MUCH more lore than LOTRO.  The books, of course, have much mroe lore than either of the two combined.  It's not The Simarllion online, but it's not The Hobbit online (which was a children's book).

But to say crafting in LOTRO is the best out there....uh, no.  Crafting in that game is probably one of the worst out there.  Anyone who crafts, and I mean crafters who craft rather than want to adventure, wants nothing to do with LOTRO.  If you are a fan or WOW Crafting, then you are a fan of LOTRO crafting because they are basically the same system.  Easy to use, easy to make, easy to understand, no real variations.

There are two, and ONLY two games, that have crafting systems so ahead of their time and so much mroe advanced than ANY other MMO out there that it would be criminal not to mention them.  Both games bombed by the way.

Horizons.  A stellar crafting system.  Well thought out, nice implemented and a lot of variation.  You can play as a crafter.  That is what crafters want.  Everything else about the game is terrible, sorry to say.

SWG is the best crafting game out there.  No American based MMO has ever matched it's crafting and resource gathering system.  SWG went through about three major game changes before they all gave up on it.  But the crafting system remained the same.  That tells you a lot.  It's kind of odd, whoever designed the SWG crafting system REALLY knows what they were doing....and whoever designed the rest of SWG must have been hit in the head a few times with a skillet as a child. 

However, both of those games are long since dead and you cannot really be new anymore.  I am not even sure if Horizons is still running.

Honorable mention goes to EVE if you are looking for an Asian based game with a massive crafting system.  If you want to try that game out, be prepared to spend a year or so just learning it's complexities.  I couldn't handle it, and I am a pretty major crafter.  Too time consuming.

As far as the whole PVE thing goes, EQ2 is at the top.  LOTRO is right behind but will never catch it simply because EQ2 will always be bigger.  I think SOE has fine tuned how to run a PVE MMO over the years.  An expansion every 9-12 months, two big game updates a year, a couple of mini updates, and holiday events.  EQ2 is a solo'ers game.

Dont forget about good ole EQ1 though.  If you have not played that game, it may surprise you.  They have EQ2ed it up, it no longer resembles the original EQ1 where if you were not in a group you could not do anything.  Lots of changes and the graphics on the last 4 expansions are actually pretty good.   It's still a time consuming game, but you can solo about 90% of it.

[Brigh]

Cheesers@Mistmoore wrote:

For pure PVE experiance I prefer LOTRO for its depth and strory lines, and its crating is the best in MMO history.  I prefer grouping and raiding in eq2 far more..  SO I bounce betweeen the two equally depending on my mood at the time.

If you mean crafting, the last time I played extensively 2 years ago, it was boring.All you do is gather the materials, use the station, select how many you want to make, and go afk.No chance of failure. Yay sense of accomplishment! ...

[Brigh]

standupwookie wrote:

Honorable mention goes to EVE if you are looking for an Asian based game with a massive crafting system.  If you want to try that game out, be prepared to spend a year or so just learning it's complexities.  I couldn't handle it, and I am a pretty major crafter.  Too time consuming.

I hope you don't mean Eve Online, as that is not an Asian game, and doesn't really have crafting per se like fantasy MMOs (sure you gather materials but there is no interaction once you set the build going and...wait...).

[Muraazi]

standupwookie wrote:

LOTRO is a pretty basic game.  They got exactly what they were trying to develop.  It only had one major change, and that was the change or percentage based skills to number based skills.  Other than that, it's pretty much the same game it was when released except for the Moria switch over to grinding instead of questing.

But it is not a deep game.  The story is fine, EQ has MUCH more lore than LOTRO.  The books, of course, have much mroe lore than either of the two combined.  It's not The Simarllion online, but it's not The Hobbit online (which was a children's book).

But to say crafting in LOTRO is the best out there....uh, no.  Crafting in that game is probably one of the worst out there.  Anyone who crafts, and I mean crafters who craft rather than want to adventure, wants nothing to do with LOTRO.  If you are a fan or WOW Crafting, then you are a fan of LOTRO crafting because they are basically the same system.  Easy to use, easy to make, easy to understand, no real variations.

There are two, and ONLY two games, that have crafting systems so ahead of their time and so much mroe advanced than ANY other MMO out there that it would be criminal not to mention them.  Both games bombed by the way.

Horizons.  A stellar crafting system.  Well thought out, nice implemented and a lot of variation.  You can play as a crafter.  That is what crafters want.  Everything else about the game is terrible, sorry to say.

SWG is the best crafting game out there.  No American based MMO has ever matched it's crafting and resource gathering system.  SWG went through about three major game changes before they all gave up on it.  But the crafting system remained the same.  That tells you a lot.  It's kind of odd, whoever designed the SWG crafting system REALLY knows what they were doing....and whoever designed the rest of SWG must have been hit in the head a few times with a skillet as a child. 

However, both of those games are long since dead and you cannot really be new anymore.  I am not even sure if Horizons is still running.

Honorable mention goes to EVE if you are looking for an Asian based game with a massive crafting system.  If you want to try that game out, be prepared to spend a year or so just learning it's complexities.  I couldn't handle it, and I am a pretty major crafter.  Too time consuming.

As far as the whole PVE thing goes, EQ2 is at the top.  LOTRO is right behind but will never catch it simply because EQ2 will always be bigger.  I think SOE has fine tuned how to run a PVE MMO over the years.  An expansion every 9-12 months, two big game updates a year, a couple of mini updates, and holiday events.  EQ2 is a solo'ers game.

Dont forget about good ole EQ1 though.  If you have not played that game, it may surprise you.  They have EQ2ed it up, it no longer resembles the original EQ1 where if you were not in a group you could not do anything.  Lots of changes and the graphics on the last 4 expansions are actually pretty good.   It's still a time consuming game, but you can solo about 90% of it.

Never played horizons...

SWG is (was) the only mmo I have ever crafted in. Ofcourse this is back before the changes. Back when the items you could create greatly depended on the resource quality. The harvesting system was beautiful. Experimenting rocked. Crafted items were the best if only thing. Nothing has ever matched (or even been close) that games sytem, from the mmo's I played.

Factory runs for items? Hell yes. Make one prototype to uber quality and pop it in the factory and bust out a few hundred. Oh how I loved it. Until they dumbed the game down so much that noone bought crafted items.

[Avadale]

Cheesers@Mistmoore wrote:

For pure PVE experiance I prefer LOTRO for its depth and strory lines, and its crating is the best in MMO history.  I prefer grouping and raiding in eq2 far more..  SO I bounce betweeen the two equally depending on my mood at the time.

I'm not here to bash you or LOTRO. I infact enjoyed that game to a point. I think it has one of the best newbie experiences going (at least when I played at release for a few months), but once you got to around level 20, it just seemed to de-evolve into massive cookie cutter content. Kill boars.. bears.. bats. Find friendly ruins.. quest guy tells you to go to dangerous ruins.. kill more boars, bears, bats.. collect "glowies".. quest guy then tells you to go to other ruins. Guy there tells you to go to the next set of dangerous ruins... kill boars.. bears.. bats... repeat until you pull your hair out (not that EQ2 doesn't have its share of hair pulling - mind numbing quests).

Also - I never found any dungeons of any size. What was there was either really small and very linear, and usually you had to chase an NPC through it so you never really got to explore it. But again - I only got to around level 20 - and that was at release - so I cannot say how it is now.

[Brigh]

Avadale wrote:

Cheesers@Mistmoore wrote:

For pure PVE experiance I prefer LOTRO for its depth and strory lines, and its crating is the best in MMO history.  I prefer grouping and raiding in eq2 far more..  SO I bounce betweeen the two equally depending on my mood at the time.

I'm not here to bash you or LOTRO. I infact enjoyed that game to a point. I think it has one of the best newbie experiences going (at least when I played at release for a few months), but once you got to around level 20, it just seemed to de-evolve into massive cookie cutter content. Kill boars.. bears.. bats. Find friendly ruins.. quest guy tells you to go to dangerous ruins.. kill more boars, bears, bats.. collect "glowies".. quest guy then tells you to go to other ruins. Guy there tells you to go to the next set of dangerous ruins... kill boars.. bears.. bats... repeat until you pull your hair out (not that EQ2 doesn't have its share of hair pulling - mind numbing quests).

Also - I never found any dungeons of any size. What was there was either really small and very linear, and usually you had to chase an NPC through it so you never really got to explore it. But again - I only got to around level 20 - and that was at release - so I cannot say how it is now.

wow you really didn't see LoTRO did you?

Barrow Downs instance...and more on up.

[MRidcully]

I hated the pacing in LotRO. Up until level 20, it was pretty good and had a nice flow to it. After that, I found it to be extremely tedious. Not in the exp department, but rather the lack of sense of accomplishment. You'd spend hours just running to and fro between different quest NPCs without ever getting a quest done. I hear they've introduced some sort of quest helper now... good, because before I couldn't even figure out where to turn in quests. Not to mention the quest descriptions themselves were rather vague to begin with. As in "go somewhere in this zone and find mob XYZ" and no mention of name and/or location of the quest NPC. So by the time you've found the quest mobs (and did a few other quests "by accident" on the way) you couldn't even remember who gave you which quest and where to turn it in. 

Never made it past 30 in LotRO. Loved the epic story and the character's involvement. The pacing however was way too off for my likes though.

EQ2 has always been a love/hate relationship somehow. Although I pre-ordered back in the day, I've been playing more off than on. Re-opened my account a few weeks ago and so far I think the game has vastly improved. The "flow" is better now (even more so with the AA slider), performance s a lot better and overall I think I'll be playing it a bit longer this time around

Still have to break level 20 on one toon however. I'm terrible at choosing the right class for me

[stevenbanks]

Im shocked that no one mentioned Vanguard's Crafting system. Oh my goodness the crafting in that game was amazing! It had a lot of interaction and was very fun. I can't stand crafting in EQ2, but in Vanguard I would spend days crafting stuff in the hopes of making a boat. I ended up leaving Vanguard, but I will always love that crafting system.

[DaFriar]

stevenbanks wrote:

Im shocked that no one mentioned Vanguard's Crafting system. Oh my goodness the crafting in that game was amazing! It had a lot of interaction and was very fun. I can't stand crafting in EQ2, but in Vanguard I would spend days crafting stuff in the hopes of making a boat. I ended up leaving Vanguard, but I will always love that crafting system.

Just saw this thread and was about to mention VG's harvesting and crafting.. Nothing beats VG's group harvesting.. I LOVED it! And the crafting writ system in VG was phenomenal.. crafting gear was vital to obtain. I still love EQ2 crafting as I continue to level my crafters to 90, but VG was awesome.

And yes horizons was superb as well, a game with a complete player crafted loot system was simply astounding. I still loved the concept of Adventure schools as your class. A fully multi-class system as well... too bad it had a horrible company running it

[Wilin]

Just to reiterate a few things here.

EQ2 is awesome for PvE.

LoTRO is awesome for PvE but for slightly different reasons. (lifetime member)

SWG was/is the best game out there for crafting. Every single item that was crafted had a unique ID because it could be truly unique. Of all the problems that SWG has had, the core crafting system was not on the list. I have some crafted items that could never be duplicated for various reasons.

SWG was the next step in MMOs in 2005. It still has some features that are better than any other MMO on the market. But, they borked the core gameplay mechanics and killed it for most of the vets. As they have reintroduced many of the pre-NGE features(creature handling, bioengineer, droid engineer, expertise trees that mimic pre-NGE deleted professions) It's still a good game for those that want to give it a try, but unfortunately, most vets will never believe that it's as good as it was. It's worth a 30 day free trial though if you don't have the old days to look back upon.