This One Goes To 11 : EQ2, GW2

There are reportedly more than three hundred developers/designers/artists working on GW2. I very much doubt there are thirty working on EQ2. If you asked me which team was more productive I'd have to say the Daybreak squad wins, hands down.

I play both of these MMOs week in, week out. I spend far more time in GW2, partly because of World vs World's endless replayability, partly because it's the most fluid-feeling MMO I've ever played and partly because it's the game Mrs Bhagpuss plays.

Well, it was. She's going through something of an MMO malaise at the moment, not really playing at all. The Path of Fire expansion certainly hasn't fired her enthusiasm. She logged in once, played through the first chapter, logged out and that's the last the game has seen of her since.

I've played GW2 almost non-stop since we got back from holiday but already, only a week and a half or so in from where I started, my attention is wandering. I finished the story on my Druid at the weekend and I have absolutely no desire to do it again on anyone else for a good long while.

I got my Jackal mount two days ago and I'm about halfway through the lengthy "quest" for the Griffon. I've picked up 180 Hero Points without thinking about it and I guess by the time I have the flying lion I'll have filled out the 250 I need for the new Elite Spec.

I don't even know what the spec called, that's how uninterested in the new Elites I am. The only one I've read up on is Weaver for the Elementalist, which sounds horrible and by general consensus is not as good as Tempest from HoT.

I barely used the Hot Elites. Most of my characters are still in whatever build they took when they hit 80, which for many of them was the best part of five years ago. I use Tempest for the overloads and Druid as a heal-based survival build but other than that I don't think I've even tested the rest, let alone learned how to use them. The last thing I need is another lot.

Two nights this week I logged in after work intending to carry on with the Griffon quest and instead ended up defending keeps in WvW for three hours. Then I logged out and went to bed.

It took 300+ people more than two years to come up with this stuff. I'm not saying I'll be done with it in a month or two; there's a wealth of long-term, background material in PoF that I'll be picking away at for years, just as I'm still picking away at Heart of Thorns and the base game.

What I am saying is that the amount of entertainment on offer is not ten times what I'm getting from EQ2, nor is it an order of magnitude better, or deeper, or wider.

Massively OP irritate the heck out of me with their coverage of Daybreak. It's relentlessly, grindingly, dismally negative. I dislike the editorial tone and attitude so much when they ride this particular hobbyhorse that I'm not even going to link to an example. Why encourage them?

Still, it doesn't do to be complacent. Feldon deciding to throw in the towel at EQ2Wire hasn't helped dispel the image of a floundering ship and the astonishing and inexorable rise of PUBG, damming what was presumably a major income stream at H1Z1 is a worrying factor.

As Wilhelm summarized, two and a half years after the sale of SOE's portfolio to unknown quantity Columbus Nova, we're really none the wiser about either the commercial viability of the MMOs or their stability in the medium-term. We don't even know the intended direction of travel.

Gossip persists that DBG is not a happy ship. Some known names have left, including a few of the biggest. Communication between the company and the players, while informative and ongoing, tends either to be formal and undemonstrative or inappropriately truculent.

And yet, for all that, as a very long-term player, fan and customer, I cannot remember the games themselves ever feeling better cared for. Looking specifically at EQ2, the DBG game I play the most these days, updates aren't just regular and reliable, they often weigh in at well in excess of anything that might have been expected.

Each holiday adds new content and Norrath has a lot of holidays. In Spring we got a major addition to the game with Familiars and Summer brought a whole season of Ethereals, something both valued and expected by the hardcore audience.

Familiars have, I think, been well received and the way Ethereals were handled this year seems to have avoided some of the problems of the past. The enormously rewarding, eight week Days of Summer quest has been almost universally praised, as has the decision to remove the time limit and keep it as permanent content.

As Autumn rolls in it brings with it the traditional pre-expansion warm-up. The ever-welcome Gear up, Level Up event is back and along with it the first of the quests that will introduce the theme of the expansion.

I ran through Strange Sensations with my Berserker earlier this week. It took me about ninety minutes and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's very well-written, with characters that immediately feel convincing and a plot that intrigues. I particularly enjoyed the nuanced, metafictional philosophizing.

I love the writing in EQ2. Like GW2, the writers put words in my character's mouth but for once they're the kind of words I believe he would say. Some of the things that came out of my Druid's mouth as he worked through the plot of Path of Fire had me swearing at the screen in irritation. Not so in EQ2.

The Strange Sensations quest also follows what appears to be an enthusiastically embraced practice at Daybreak these days - user-friendliness. There's a lot of traveling involved but the dark elf wizard with whom you mainly deal opens a handy portal every time to send you just where you need to go. I really appreciated that, especially after the lengthy tours the panda had me running (which were, of course, entirely appropriate to, and indeed the essence of, that quest).

I was surprised just how delighted I was to find Lendinaria waiting for me in Skyshrine. Lendinaria is a dragon and I've met a lot of dragons over the years but she's one of my favorites. She's certainly one of the dragons I remember best. It did genuinely feel like unexpectedly running into an old friend.

When someone from my supposed past crops up in GW2's storyline I generally struggle to remember ever meeting them before. When I do remember them, as in the case of the execrable Ellen Kiel, I mostly wish I could let them take a really close look at the business end of a big stick.

Then there are the rewards. In GW2 you're lucky if you get a mini. Okay, let's be reasonable: in Path of Fire you almost always get a mini. Not one you're ever going to use, and because everyone gets one they trade for a few silver on the markets so there's not even much point selling it, but still, it's a mini. Plus a load of crafting mats, some armor you can salvage into more crafting mats, some skins you'll never wear and some bits and pieces that you don't really know what they're for.

In EQ2 you get stuff you want and stuff you need. Stuff with value. Days of Summer was like winning the lottery. Strange Sensations only gives you two items but they are excellent: three 25-day Research Time Reducers, always most welcome, and an Ascension Level boost from what I thought was the max level (10) to 11.

I confess I don't understand Ascension Classes. I have one levelled up to halfway through Level 4 so far and I have yet to use it. I have it pigeon-holed as End Game Stuff, nothing to do with me.

If you read the official EQ2 forums it seems Ascension is Pay to Win and everyone hates it but then if you read the official EQ2 forums everyone has been saying that about everything since about 2004. I'll learn about Ascension if and when I find I can't do stuff I want to do without it. So far, not happened.

It's October so everything's turning orange. According to EQ2Traders Norrath's Halloween Holiday, Nights of the Dead is back, with a ton of new items to craft or buy, new achievements, a new quest and a load of tweaks and improvements to the plethora of existing spooky stuff.

We don't have a release date yet but the expansion will most likely arrive in November. DBG pop one of these things out every year like clockwork. Some are better than others but they're all solid and entertaining.

I have a good feeling about this year's; the EQ2 team have really been on a roll these last few months and for all the relentless Eeyoring of the community I do sense a glimmer of grudging appreciation behind the scowls, here and there.

It may well be that Norrath's days are numbered. All the MMOs are aging. The prospects of attracting new players must be vanishingly small and hanging on to those who are left must get harder every year. Nothing lasts forever but in this case we don't have any certainty that Columbus Nova even wants it to last.

For all that, the games feel in great shape. For my money, EQ2's small team does every bit as well as GW2's large one. If the ship goes down it won't be for lack of expertise or effort from the crew.

I'm just going to enjoy what we have while we have it. And if Mrs Bhagpuss turns out to be done with GW2, I may well find I have a lot more time to spend in Norrath. There's so much more I want to do there, still.