What is the difference between EQ2 and EQ1?Follow

What is EQ1 like?

Hmm, where to start.

Crafting: In EQ2 you harvest your components, spend time at a machine making your items, and a lot of the results are actually worth something to other players in the game. In EQ1 you usually have to kill mobs in hopes of having certain components drops (so many types of mobs for some things), but the "crafting" part is easier (just click combine on the recipe in the tradeskill container and it makes it), however, a great majority crafted items are not desired at all.

Combat: This is probably one of the few things I still like in EQ1 over EQ2. EQ1 combat is usually longer but you can actually use a lot more strategy than EQ2. To me, EQ2 combat feels like a "roll your head across the keyboard and the fight is done in 20 seconds!". Maybe grouping/raiding is different, I grouped and raided a lot in EQ1 but mostly avoid it now.

Gaining Experience: Like Nadenu mentioned, game play is more tedious and leveling is slower in EQ1. The different is that EQ2 actually sincerely focused their game on questing, whereas EQ1 quests feel like an afterthought. For the most part, you spend hours upon hours grinding the same mobs over and over in EQ1 to get AA points and/or levels, and it honestly gets very old very fast. They have been adding more and more mission type quests to the game the past few expansions but there's still a vast gap between the two games there.

There's tons of other stuff to compare but I think that addresses what most people would be curious about offhand.

There are a few things I can remember (dimly) as being vastly different in EQ1 but I don't know that any of them made the game "better".

1) corpse runs - when you die in EQ1, your dead body keeps your stuff. For this reason, everyone I know who played kept a backpack in the bank with a back up set of armor, weapons and potions ready for whenever they had to take that "sucker's walk" back to their own dead body.

2) harvesting - only druids and rangers did it in EQ1 so if you had a need for the things that were harvested (some interesting foods and other components) you had two choices - either make a druid or a ranger -OR- buy the things you needed in the bazaar.

3) aggro - everyone who has ever played EQ1 can remember seeing "train to zone" in the chat window more times then they can count! Mobs in EQ1 don't get bored with you... they chase you till you leave the zone or until someone kills them. Even worse, if they are sentient race, they bring their friends when they chase you and gather any other members of their species as they run!

4) AI self preservation - MOBs in EQ1 don't just stand there and die while you do your slice and dice... they reach a certain level of health (about 20 or 30%) and then they cut and run! What this means to the player is that you better have a way to slow or stop them (roots & snares) or you better be ready to chase them down to finish them off for the XP.

5) limited spell selection - As any kind of caster in EQ1 you always had plenty of choices in spells and spell lines... you just couldn't use them all at once! As a player you were limited to 8 spells that you could have ready and loaded at any one time. You would "mem" these spells (load them into a special window) and God help you if you got into a fight where you needed something you didn't have loaded cause they were the only 8 spells you could cast...

6) mana levels and the spell book - casters in EQ1 spent a lot of their time sitting and staring at a useless screen. You see, in order to regen mana (after a fight) you had to sit down, open your spell book and WAIT............. till your mana level came back up and you were ready to fight again.

7) distances - even when playing a class that could cover ground well (like with ports and/or enhanced run speed) it took a long time to get anywhere you wanted to be in EQ1. Lets say you were in Quenos and you wanted to get to somewhere deep in the Karanas (to kill Highland Lions for HQ lion pelts). It could easily take you an hour (in real time) to get there. This is not only because the distances were vast (to get from point A to point B you might need to travel through 4 or 5 entire zones) but also because there was no fast travel in EQ1... no rental horses... no griffons... mo magic carpets... just you and your legs (or a horse if you could afford one). Beyond the distance, there was also the innate problem of dealing with aggro and un-forgetful MOBs (see #3 above).

8) forced grouping - I played EQ1 for several years but still never really did anything but dabble at it... I was in a good sized guild and often played for long stretches of time (whole afternoons or evenings in a sitting) but in EQ1, unless you group A LOT you aren't ever going to really get anywhere meaningful in terms of character level and development. I crafted, I sold stuff in the bazaar, I did quests and I grouped with friends and guildies... but I never managed to level cap a toon and I never reached the end game... it just required too much commitment and at my core, I am a casual gamer.

9) being an outcast - Playing EQ1 can easily teach you about being unwanted! Not every class is as useful as every other... not every healer is considered viable so if you play a druid you hear a lot of "sorry, we're looking for a cleric". And if you're playing a ranger, you hear a lot of "sorry"!!! This can keep you from grouping in a game where grouping is a primary requirement.

10) ummmm... - I don't really have a 10th point... it's been about 7 years since I logged into EQ1 and as time fades, the vision dims... But honestly, from a moment that came very soon after the first time I logged into EQ2 I knew I would never go back! Every now and then I think it might be fun to log back on to wander around in that old skin for a while and look at the world through those eyes but I stop and take a breath or two and the feeling always passes!

And yet.... and yet.... I still miss it.

-----They got rid of this years ago. There's now a guild lobby to summon your corpse. All your stuff stays on your body when you die.



-----This one, they got rid of in the The Serpent's Spine expansion. And increased mana regen as you sat. Hehe, how long have you been away from the game? :P

Edited, Oct 26th 2010 1:50am by missjackie