EQ2/WoW/FFXI ::cry:: ::confused::Follow

Now I realize that my opinion doesnt matter to anyone here but here is my two cents on EQ2.

Last year I stopped playing WoW in April, and I went back to FFXI for a couple of months... In June I decided to ditch FFXI again and went to EQ2...

I REALLY enjoyed EQ2, and then at around L.35 Shaman I hit a wall. Questing didnt seem fun anymore, and I sure wasnt going to go out grinding... there was nothing left for me to see or do that I WANTED to see or do.
Sure there was the new Desert of Flames expansion pack (that I did buy and install.. and couldnt really do much in at L.35), but I just couldnt bring myself to play EQ2 anymore... it lost its newness to me.

I hated how you crafted, and I hated how a lot of the content [see: L.30+] that required you to do quests and such was centered around killing a group of heroic enemies which was very difficult without a group... and I hate being made to group when I dont want to 90% of the time. So I quit EQ2 in July or August. (this was all before the revamp of classes)

Came back to WoW in September or so.

Then last month I decided to try out EQ2 again, so me and a buddy jumped on and started new characters. It was like last June all over.. I enjoyed everything about the game except two things... no more class quests :'( and the crafting still sucked (IMO, of course). This time I picked to be a Conjurer and was having a hell of a good time playing.
Then after about a week playing Sony did the new Live Update and revamped the crafting system (AMEN!), so I was REALLY having fun.

Then it happened...
I started to accept quests that had me going into Heroic monster encounters which wasnt too bad, so I started my L.20 Armor Quests and was able to slowly but surely get through the first two quests... til I accepted the third and it was sending me into Stormhold. The third armor quest was listed as a L.21 Heroic and everything I needed to kill was L.18^^^ Heroic (or somewhere around there)... Now if you ever played EQ2 you would know that ^^^Heroic monsters are damn hard even with a group. Even at L.22-23 I couldnt kill these easily solo.
Anyway... I figured I didnt have to get that quest done right then, so I went to Thundering Steppes to get to L.24 and to get my Tellurian Soldier, which from what I remember from playing before was a real badass and could tank like mad.... so here I am awaiting the day that I get the Soldier and are able to withstand some tough monsters. The day finally arrives and I ding L.24 and I get the new most awesome pet EVAH... right? ...not really...
The soldier is a better tank than my centipede pet, but no where near what I expected... so I go and try to kill a L.18^^^ Heroic in Stormhold and I cant heal my pet fast enough to keep him alive and of course it dies and I die about 2 seconds later. This is with an Adept I healing spell, but the soldier was just an Apprentice I spell.

So I am sitting here (like 3 days ago) wondering if I can tough it out til my next tank pet, and I decide that I dont think I can so I go ahead and cancel my EQ2 account yet again. Mainly because I didnt want to group. I just had no wanting need to keep doing the same "Go kill 10 [insert mob here]" quests in order to get me my levels....

I might have picked the wrong class... I even thought about keeping the account open and playing a Monk... but if I cant devote at least 10 hours a week to it I dont think I need to keep it open... :/

I have a baby on the way and as of right now I have FFXI and WoW payments, and I just dont think I could get away with EQ2 payments on top of that.
I have thought about cancelling FFXI and keeping EQ2 and WoW, and I am still not 100% that I wont do that... we'll see.

(side note: Yes... I know I griped about not wanting to party... and yes... I realize you cant do anything in FFXI without a party... I just cant bring myself to cancel FFXI mainly because I bought the XBox 360 FFXI and installed it on the XBox already and have yet to play the 360 version. I always just play the PC version. Yeah... I wasnt too smart with that purchase. :/ )

at 26, my level 17 pants i got out of FG have 128 mitigation and a but load of stats, while crafted level 20 pants have 101 mitigation and no stats unless you pay extra for someone to imbue them.

as far as the expansions in EQ2, i wouldnt buy any of them. all of them are for the level 40 and up crowd, except splitpaw, which was sold as level 20 and up, solo and group. well, there are 3 quests you can do SOLO, after that, its all level 30 and up group only. MABE somewhere there is a wandering non heroic mob they added so they can say "solo" on the adds. mabe.

do what i do. dump them both. wait a week. then load the ONE you miss most. play it till you remember why you quit, cancell it, play the other untill you reach the same point. remamber, its a GAME. if your not having FUN, your WASTING your money. when it stops being FUN, drop it and move to the next. if you miss it, come back untill you remember why you droped it in the first place.

I wouldn't call the AQ armor "far inferior" though, the stats are decent enough that if you didn't want to get the crafted armor it wouldn't hurt you. Chances are SR bought a piece (or found one) that WASN'T actually crafted. I've YET to see a piece of crafted gear w/o SOME kind of stats on it. I have, HOWEVER, seen many DROPPED pieces with VERY similar names to the crafted gear. They have 0 stats on them. They also miss the key thing that mark them as crafted... some form of crafting stage before them.

they need to make the game.....intersting. gona go watch some sci-fi now.

dude, i JUST logged off, and spent the last 20 minutes going through the broker. the ONLY crafted rings i saw had 3 stats on them. only 3. and they were all plus 3 to those stats.