Lies. EQ was blank when I played. There was superficial and minimla choices to make in chargen (a couple stat points that didn't matter at all where you put them) and absolutely zero choice in chardev. Zero. That makes the game simple and retarded. Zero balancing within the class.
I agree on the character generation. The couple of stat points really didn't matter much. And yup, there was really hardly any character development. But therefore you got something else - the player's skill did actually matter to an extent I have never seen in any other MMORPG. If you were a good bard or not did not depend on some points that you distributed in a certain way at level up, it depended on how good you were at playing your class.
Yup, there was zero class balancing. And why should there be any, after all there was no real PvP in EQ. Class balancing is really one of the things that is dragging down the MMO genre nowadays, because it makes classes uniform - the classes in EQ however were unique and ech had a certain role to fulfill in a group.
You could solo by grinding, grinding, grinding, non stop in the same spot, over and over. I soled to like 35 before I figured out how empty and hollow the world was and how there was nothing to break up the grinding, besides like grinding fishing. It is the most empty, choiceless, and bare game ever made. It included nothing that I like about the rpg genre at all. Not one important choice to make beyond if you wanted to waste more time playing a choiceless, 100% gear dependant game.
Then please enlighten me how exactely you leveled you AO character to 60... by socialising, exploring... ah wait somehow I have the feeling you did by a healthy mix of killing mobs somehwere, and running one mission after the other. Where exactely is the difference? And AO was also absolutely not gear dependant? Was that why you got yourself all these implants, and the best equipment possible so that you could beat a level 110 character at level 60?
ANd vanguard is the same exact way, except you get a couple stat points when you level up. Woopity do. Its still 100% gear dependant and basically choice-less. Why bother? Why waste time playing a game and level up a character when at the end you have the same exact character as everyone else that chose the same class beyond gear, which is dictated by how much time you have to waste playing?
As I said - in the end it always comes down to gear. Personally I never had a problem with that. AO was no exception. The difference between EQ and AO was simply that you actually had a choice what equipment to use, and that high end gear was interesting enough to get you going.
I play mmorpgs because you get more band for the buck than sp games, and some mmorpgs are a dream for min/maxers and munchkins. I also like to kill real people. I like to kill people a lot. No mob will ever provide as much of a challenge as a person. Using wow as an example, I consitently take down elites solo that everyone on thotbot says you can't. In EQ, it would 100% depend on your gear. In wow, it depends on strategy, tactics, smarts, and knowledge.
I'm not quite sure if you didn't play another game than I did. EQ depended very much on tactics - much more than WoW. Fear kiting, mass kiting, charm kiting and much more are things that EQ invented... you could do awsome things in EQ, but you actually had to know how to play your class, you could not just stand in front of a mob and push a few buttons.
I don't raid or do instances, so I have crap gear. I have a mix of greens/blues and one purple item (but, as a druid, some of the greens are better than any blues until you started getting the t5 sets, which I can't since I'll cut my penis off before I raid).
Why? Afraid to fuck up if more than one person depends on your abilities?
I don't mind losing agianst the people that always beat me, because I know and they know how it would go if I did have the t5 gear, and without it, whenever I do happen to beat them on those rare occasions, it makes it that much better.
I thought equipment doesn't matter in WoW - or does it now?
In EQ the only that mattered was gear. thats it. There was no choices to build a different character. And strategy was next to non-existant. Its just a horrible, horrible game that was shallow and empty.
Simply not true. I admit gear played an important part. But strategy was as much important as knowing your class. You could have the best equipment on Norrath as a bard, but if you didn't know how to keep two mobs mezzed while beating down the third one, or how to play two mobs against eachother without getting beaten up after your charm broke, then you just couldn't solo efficiently at high level.
And the game was far from shallow and empty. You could basically talk to every single NPC in the game, and most of them had something to say to you. There was a lot of information about the world to be found when talking to NPCs. Now look at AO - how many NPCs were available there to give you some info... like none?
I think you didn't like EQ because it wasn't a game for "min/maxers and munchkins" - but hey, EQ was a game for roleplayers. It was a game that unintentional and intentional empahsized typical P&P values like adventuring and socialising. It simply wasn't meant for solo play. And neither is Vanguard.