EverQuest II and World of Warcraft Reviews at GameSpot

Gamespot reviewed EverQuest II and gave it a 7.8. Readers reviews are currently giving a score of 6.9. In the World of Warcraft review, Gamespot gave WoW a 9.5, with the readers currently at 9.1. All these are out of 10, so 9.5 is very, very high. But what do these numbers mean?

Somebody asked me which game was better, and I answered "If you are in doubt, play World of Warcraft". And that is what Gamespot is expressing with their numbers. For the majority of players, World of Warcraft is the better game. But there are certainly some people that will like Everquest II better. And this minority of players will probably be aware of EQ2 being the game for them, as they are most likely veterans of the first version of Everquest. If you are an avid Everquest fan, it is possible that you will find World of Warcraft too shallow, or too easy.

Here in Europe there was a World of Warcraft Pre-order box release last week. The Pre-order box contained not only the pre-order, but also a beta key for the European beta. And one day after release of this "strictly limited" offer, it was sold out everywhere. I tried EB games, and even Amazon was sold out after just one day. In the US, WoW sold 250,000 copies on the day it was released. SOE doesn't publish numbers, but judging from the numbers of servers, EQ2 isn't even half as successful.

So if you are just counting the numbers, World of Warcraft "wins" the battle of the MMORPG giants against Everquest 2, in review scores and in sales. There is still a possibility that EQ2 has a better player retention, but I doubt it will be enough to make it financially more successful than WoW. This isn't totally unexpected. EQ2 is very much a MMORPG geek niche product, while WoW is specifically designed to get new players into th genre.

But that doesn't mean that EQ2 is a bad game, or unplayable. Unless you commit credit card fraud, or have a close friend in the US who would borrow you his credit card, Everquest 2 is the game of choice for us Europeans. And even if you can play World of Warcraft, you might get bored of it in a couple of months, at which point it might be a good idea to check out Everquest 2. Two games are always better than one. I'm looking forward to the European WoW release early next year, but I'm not holding my breath. I'm perfectly happy playing EQ2 until then.
- posted by Tobold @ 4:47 PM Permanent Link