[Digits]

I hope no one minds a break from threads about how imbalanced AV is and how Vanguard finally turning it around.

EQ2 is good, but it's not perfect and it has tremendous flaws. Despite this fact, the game mostly gets unending phrase for how well it has managed to turn around from the train wreck it was three years ago. Maybe it's because the game doesn't have a heavy following here, or maybe it's because we're all so proud of our little retard game pulling out a 3.4 GPA we can't bear to talk about its bad points. I don't know and I don't really care. I have shit to complain about.

All classic overland zones are bad. Maybe there's a great quest, or a good spot, but 90 percent of the time classic zones are good old fashioned terrible. This could be because of a hasty redesign to turn them from overland dungeons into something people can solo in, but the result is sub par and the more likely culprit is that these zones weren't much to speak of to begin with. The goon guild on Unrest sees many new people come and go, and the universal truth is that those who level in EoF/darklight love the game, and those who do not hate it. I make it my mission to guide newcomers to the game to the proper zone. There's even a good chance of someone quiting if they don't know that Darklight leads naturally into Butcherblock. The main problem is that quest hubs are terrible, and no matter how many times you try to 'fix' it by putting random quest npcs together you cannot get over the hurdle that the entire mob layout of the classic zones is awkward and schizophrenic and if you do not design the mobs around the quests the zone ultimately fails. The best you can hope with these revamps is that the zones become passable, instead of actively bad, but they are still going to be vastly inferior to EoF counterparts. You can design a quest hub like Darklight to blitz people through levels, or you can design a quest hubs like Steamfont with very long and drawn out quests that span 15 levels. These two zones are nearly dead center perfect, and should serve as an example for the rest of your leveling zones to follow. My point? Stop putting 10 quests at the zone line and calling it a revamp. The zone has to flow, not start and stop constantly. Look at the quest lines in Nektulos and Zek and tell me it doesn't remind you of someone with Parkinsons.

Lavastorm. This is an oddity because it's actually a good zone mixed in with the terrible release zones. If you take it for what it is, an outdoor gauntlet designed to keep a full group on its toes for about an hour, it performs it's job admirable (presuming you don't have group invis). If you realize what it actually is, an outdoor dungeon, it's a terrible piece of shit. Why does it succeed at one and not the other? Simple. The zone has no fucking loot. I saw 5 named in my 4 hours there today. One was a spawned named from a Heritage Quest, two were goblins who dropped no loot and the final ones were a 2 group and 4 group epic encounters. Because those are really useful in a leveling zone. Lavastorms only purpose is to look cool and be a giant fuck you to people who want to enjoy Solusesk's eye. Why not fix it? Why not throw in a few named per area who drop exquisites? Oh, right, because even if they were added they would just drop wooden chests because itemization outside of EoF is terrible.

Oh, right, that brings me to itemization. Good news, it's a cluster fuck. Named shit out wood chests constantly and for too many zones don't even give AA experience, meaning you get a wallet with 6 hitpoints and 30 disease resist on it instead of a Master scroll (always a good drop) and something that you might want to equip. If treasured items are going to be dropping regularly from chests there need to be fantastic legendary items in the loot table to offset the potential bullshit factor and masters need to be much more common. Varsoons is a good example of this, and may in fact be too good because the bulk of 30-36 masters come from this zone. Social dungeons aren't instances like DFC where it's fine to have only two or three masters drop per run, for group dungeons like Perma/CT/SE there is a serious issue of better loot and experience coming from solo zones in EoF. Just delete the zones if this is how you want it to be, because aside from heritages and the odd farmer no one will touch them. This issue keeps warping around itself over and over again until you reach the point where there are hardly any master scrolls for some level ranges. Even adepts are running short in supply as I get past 50.

Speaking of not bothering, how about those ghost and golem models? I enjoy fighting poorly textured human models and have since 99 but these are so abundant, so terrible and so poorly conceived that I have to bitch about it. Plus, the fact these still exist flies in the face of the current art directors declaration that he wants EQ2 to be filled with the most fantastic creatures possible.

Golems: Golems are not humans with a completely brown texture because they're supposed to be made of mud, or something. For how prevalent these are in all the dungeons it is idiocy that they are a poorly textured ogre model with stock animations. These look terrible, animate completely wrong and a just an eye sore. Agro run and root it and watch while it starts doing monk poses for absolutely no reason. Yup, that's a sluggish creature made of granite alright! Retexture clockwork gnomes if you want to be lazy about it, at least the pile of shit would die cool.

Ghosts: In the bible there is a NO sign under two men fucking each other in the ass and on the other side of the page there is a NO sign under EQ2 ghosts. Visionaries, those disciples were. They are a random race model, with stock animations and a completely white texture. Does this make them look like ghosts? No, it makes them look like graphics glitch. Beware the true terror of the 3d card driver error. Furthermore, they're hyper detailed which means they kill performance. Oh, and they're in almost every zone. These are complete trash, and I cannot believe they are so extensive and have not seen any improvements in the past few years. Make them transparent and float around, or are EQ2 artists too busy trying to perfect modeling Sarnak heads after Barry Bonds? Oh, and copy/paste the sound files for ghosts from EQ1 while you're at it.

One last thing, and hopefully this isn't accurate past 50 but I doubt it. Stop making us body pull every dungeon. If someone doesn't know about it dungeons are ridiculous with a full group, and a necro who knows how to inch towards a mob slowly can solo almost anything. It's garbage, and it needs to be changed.

Models, itemization, body pulls and zones. I've covered most of the issues that drive me insane whenever they crop up, and from the reviews I've read of DoF there is no indication that they are going away.

PS. Get rid of lamia vaginas.