I think the population is larger than ever before, but there's a lot of competition out there these days. All games will take a bit of a hit for a while with AoC but how many people will stay there after the free month (and the opening sub-game) remains to be seen.

For myself I still have a Station Access account for EQ2 but will probably cut that back to a standard one, as I don't play that often and I've left Vanguard until it gets the right and consistent future direction. My son has taken over my second EQ2 account. I have LoTRO on lifetime membership and have been enjoying that as well as playing AoC since open beta.

I don't think I'm very different from the norm in that most players are dipping in and out of games regularly these days, and I wouldn't expect EQ2 to be any different in that there will always be the diehard backbone supporters with the rest dipping in and out according to what else is going on. SOE have a habit, however, of producing the game that I always return to and EQ2 has taken that mantle over from its predecessor.

Meanwhile, the game has no serious performance issues (Nvidia problems seem common to all MMOs especially in relation to the 8800 series), and the game balance is excellent with very few bugs so there's nothing for people to rant about here. The devs post constantly on the official boards so that's where most people go for their information.

EQ2 Gold,EQ2 Power Leveling