*Performance*, animations and models/customization are fairly important in this game at this point, I think. The first in particular (meaning without the need to turn off every graphic option).
My dislike for the animations goes along with my complete dislike of the model. Some of the "foreign" races are slightly more acceptable, but the humans are really ugly, the skin tones (included those in this small exp pack) are horrible. The way ALL the characters twist they head to look at you is SCAREY.
AT LEAST they should prevent the NPCs to look at you when they are already triggering another animation. It's silly to see a fisherman launching with his pole while his head is turned 90 degrees to look at me. Or someone drinking and pushing the jug right into his ear because he is again looking in my direction.
And btw, the pig race is also ugly because again of how the movement is managed. All the pigs just "walk" normally, then every pig can have a sudden "burst" that makes it shift forward sharply and then it walks again. The pig who has more "bursts" wins.
Basically there is no real "race", you don't see the pigs running and slowly gertting an advantage on the others as they run. Instead they just walk and shift jerkly forward when a "burst" happens.
The idea is fun, but the execution is rather bad (and the winning pig runs right into the lake when it starts to run in circles after the race, plus then running ON the fence as they go back at the start line. You know, polish and details).
Other things I didn't like after a quick glance of the exp (with my level 11 character, mind you):
- Characters twisting their head to look at you. This "emote" should be restricted to happen at 60 degree max, instead of 90. Plus I'd build a system so that this "emote" isn't always on on every character and monster, but flagged and enabled manually when appropriate (in many cases it isn't). Plus also disable it while the character is busy with another action, add a delay so that the head doesn't twist back and forward quickly as it happens in a few cases and then also flag it to happen only in certain cases (or better, let the designers disable it under set circumstances).
- The grass texture of the village area looks like a noisy, computer-generated stereogram instead of "grass". This is often a problem with EQ2 (ugly terrain textures). Transitions between one type of terrain to the other are also ugly.
- Skin tones and textures of the SOGA models.
- Laggy area.
- Farmers walking animation doesn't match their speed and they "slide" on the terrain as on ice.
- One NPC swims at the bottom of a pond. I don't know how he can remain alive (but also don't know if this is justified).
