World of Warcraft or Everquest 2?

[vputz]

...and to return to the poor original poster's intent...

I haven't tried EQ2, but I played the original EQ for several years, and have been playing WoW for a couple years now.

It depends on what sort of player you are. Assuming that EQ2 has a focus similar to the original EQ, it is oriented toward a more "hardcore gamer" crowd, whereas WoW is very clearly oriented toward a more casual crowd. If you are looking to immerse yourself in a game and play it a LOT, and do large raids with lots and lots of people, likely EQ2 is a better fit. If you play WoW maniacally, you will max out your character very quickly and spend your game time running through the same old "end-game" instances. As a different sort of comparison: I remember some of the original EQ raids being up to I think 72 people; the max in WoW is 40, and they have stated that they won't be making any more 40-person content and 25 will be the max. It's a very different feel.

Having said that, if you don't have as much time to play, WoW is likely to be a better fit, as it has faster progression, a more straightforward play style, and is easier to pick up and put down. The graphics are indeed somewhat "cartoony", but they also perform well on a midrange system (the original EQ bogs down heavily even on pretty modern hardware once you get enough people around, while WoW has performed pretty well for me with enough RAM).

Myself, I would recommend WoW if you haven't played a MMORPG before, but I do admit to having no direct EQ2 experience, so I'm really comparing EQ and WoW here.

[anhlon]

wow if you're a casual gamer 5-10 hours per week , lots of solo contents can party and run isntances if you have 2hours to dedicate to it. easy to play, battle grounds, pvp (although it can become quite a pain with kill on sight and corpse camper, 4 lvl 60s camping 2 mid 20s), different servers for differnt styles of play (pve, pvp, roleplaying (pvp & pve)) but the community is really immature, so just do a /leave general chat

eq2 if you have lots of time and dedication to it, not much soloing contents. levelling is a pain and hell.
pull 1 mob, kill, rest, rinse and repeat. great tradeskill system though (if you like crafting)

for me, wow cause i can only spare 4-6 hours of games per week if i'm lucky!

[flegmatik]

Played WOW for about a year, EQ2 about 4 months.

WOW:
- great graphics, art is awesome, smooth animation, vibrant colors
- fun, solo frendly untill high end content (50+), lots of good/decent quests, battlegrounds (fun, fun, fun!)
- serous problem with high end content, it became a full time job (if you want to compete in PVP with good gear, PVP ranks)
- it still lacks high end gameplay (if you're in big guild with great organization, you don't have any problem)
- almost useless crafting (apart from enchanting) at high end
- primarily PVP ballanced classes, overpowered melee
- it runs on Linux! (vine, cedega)

EQ2:
- plastic (barbie style) graphic, not so smooth animation, unplayable if you don't fine tune graphic settings for every zone (some UI mods have different graphic presetings set, so it's not such a big problem (fetish mod)), washed out color pallete
- fun, solo frendly, insane number of good/decent quests, grouping is prefered at higher levels (40+)
- high end content is present in form of expansions, alternate advancement, ...
- crafting that actualy gives you something (recently completely reworked, simplyfied)
- primarily PVE ballanced classes
- it DON'T run on Linux!

I also agree with comment of player maturity (not age) comparing WOW and EQ2, EQ2 crowd is generaly more mature and plesent.