Guess what's back...

Yup... that's right.... Everquest 2 is back in the frame!

After my fling with Oblivion and a little dabbling in the Matrix I spent most of this weekend hooked into EQ2 remembering just how good it is!

It has underlined for me just what it is that makes an MMO special... the community. EQ2 wouldn't be even half as good if it were not for being part of a great guild, in my case the Boogie Knights! Without the likes of people like Chillispike, Crude, Pristine, Lister and the rest of the gang (sorry, if I named you all I'd be here all day :-P) , EQ2 would be quite a boring and lonely place. Looking back, it was the same when I was playing on the Nektulos server as part of the Army of Darkness or when I joined Twin Suns in SWG... when I joined both of these, there was a small gathering of players at the core at the guild that made it fun to play. Willing to help, generous beyond reproach and always up for a laugh! But in the case of both of those guilds, these select few became disheartened and stopped playing due to in-fighting and a selfish few... and then the game loses it's attraction. That's what I feel makes EQ2 the best MMO I've played... I'm not quite sure how it's worked out but the Boogie Knights 'open door' approach to guild membership, where any member can recruit, seems to have paid off. Then again, maybe it's just the EQ2 community as a whole? You still get the hardcore raid guilds who are constantly snipe at each other, and the pointless minority who think it's fun to abuse or exploit other players (and the game itself), you've still got the bugs and balancing that curse every MMO... but I rarely notice these days cause they just don't get in the way!

So why have others failed to hold my attention where EQ2 has succeeded?

- World of Warcraft - The behemoth that is WoW... Lots of nice ideas but the vast numbers of very childish casual gamers just put me off. I'm not against people playing outside of character (I'm not exactly a roleplayer myself) but running into someone claiming that I "Suxor" for no other reason than I'm stood next to them kind of shatters the illusion. Unfortunately the game seems to promote this kind of game play...
- The Matrix Online - I still like the Matrix, and will still be playing it on occassion. There are a lot of nice touches to the game and I think it deserves a bit of support. I've not really experienced the community though... there appear to be a lot of hardcore players (I rarely see anyone under level 50) that just seem to congregate around selected hardlines waiting for a fight. So far I've resisted the lure of all un-solicited invites to crews/outfits (word of advice to potential crew/outfit leaders... if you want someone to join, try talking to them first so that neither of you end up wasting your time).
- Planetside - Early days so far but I've not really seen much resembling a community. The closest thing to getting people together appears to be when a Galaxy dropship lands in a base and the pilot starts shouting that people are needed in a particular hotspot and that they will wait 3 minutes for passengers! Not the most attractive proposition I've ever had but it is actually quite a good way for new players to get involved. Unfortunately, despite jumping into several major battles, no body seems particularly interested in what anyone else is doing. As long as there is another body there to take hostile fire, they're all happy to stay silent and rack up kills!
- Star Wars Galaxies - Ah... the immortal SWG. Like EQ2 the community aspect is quite strong... or at least it used to be. Unfortunately, with the introduction of the 'twitch' based combat they seem to have lost a lot of the people who made it worth while. I re-activated my account a little while back to see what the new combat was like and it was a certain amount of fun but (and it's a BIG but) with the changes made to the character system I think that they've lost some of the soul of the game... I'd much rather have stayed a Master Smuggler/Master Weaponsmith than a level 66 Spy because it felt like the character was something I had chosen. So with the introduction of a more casual gaming style comes the more casual community. Twin Suns, who when I first joined formed a small city just a stones throw away from Jabba's palace, appears to be no more and the city is gone... I suspect that might be the case with a lot of the guilds.
- Lineage II - There's not much I can say about the community in this game... it is, ultimately, hardcore and very unforgiving. Once you get inside, however, it opens up considerably so for those that are willing to persevere... the rewards are there.

I won't go back any further than Lineage II as I've not played the other games recently enough to give an honest opinion on them...

So if you find yourself on the Splitpaw EQ2 server... give me a /tell and I'll introduce you too a few friendly (if slightly insane) Boogie Knights...