EQ2 Hurting for Players

[Brigandier]

I got this PM on my guild's forums..



This is an invitation for xxxx xx xxxxxxxxx

My name is Erasmus -- I am the manager of Guild Relations for Sony Online Entertainment. Our EverQuest II team has been doing some really great things in the world of Norrath, and we are inviting a few select guilds to play and give us some feedback on the improvements that they have made.

Making EverQuest II the best MMO game in the world has been our passion - and we are constantly tweaking the game to make it better and more fun. In the past, we've received great input from gamers like you on how and where to improve. Now, it's your turn -- we want your guild's feedback and opinions.

If your guild would like to participate in our focus testing, please let me know. You and your guild mates can drop me an email at GuildRelations@soe.sony.com -- include your email, and the name of your guild. Give me a day or so to process the email, and I'll send you and your guild mates the link to download the client, plus a key that will give you 30 days of free play. Once the 30 days are up, you are welcome to continue playing, at your cost. You and your guild mates are welcome to drop me an email with your comments, insight, and feedback -- we want to hear from you.

We appreciate your consideration, and hope to see you in EverQuest II in the near future!

Erasmus

Manager, Guild Relations
Sony Online Entertainment
guildrelations@soe.sony.com
http://www.station.sony.com

[Saban]

MERGE SERVERS.

[Zuuljin]

This isnt anything new. Even WoW was doing it some time ago. I guess WoW is hurting for players too!!!!

[Maxxius]

It's actually a pity about EQ2. They so screwed up in the begining that it will just haunt them for a long time. No matter how much improved the game is now, the bad press from the start is just tough for them to overcome. I had no desire to play EQ2 at launch. I read and saw what they were offering and it just did not appeal to me. I read and saw the changes, and it started to appeal to me but it was just too late to bother getting into.

They might want to try for EQ3 heheh.

[Duppin]

Posting here so I can keep track of what happens when Utnayan finds this thread.

[Lacutis]

Makes sense to me, regardless of any desperate need for more players, if you want to coax people from one product to another, don't rely on the vague hope they might check you out, go to them and put an offer on the table.

6 million numpties playing Wow means 6 million less numpties I have to deal with in EQ2

[Sancus]

No idea how this would imply they're hurting for players.

You don't use good marketing strategies JUST when you're "hurting".

[Xandax]

How exactly does SOE's asking for your guild to test/improve some content imply that EQ2 is hurting for players?

[Saban]

my biggest problem with EQ2 is playing on a regular server trying to find people to group with, sub30 qeynos side on the server i played on was pretty much a ghost town.

[Jessie]

My guild got one too. I'm not sure how they got to our website though /shrug.

[xilsharn]

Is EQ2 really that much improved now? I remember the biggest problem I had was performance issues. Are those fixed? Are the character models still hideous? What's the leveling curve like?

[Deris]

The learning curve consists of : I hope you can solo up to your 40's lolz.

[Lost Ranger]

Originally Posted by xilsharn

Is EQ2 really that much improved now? I remember the biggest problem I had was performance issues. Are those fixed? Are the character models still hideous? What's the leveling curve like?

I personally think that EQ2 is many many times better then it was when it was release. I played in the beta, and a little bit into release and the game was just painful to play. I was told by a friend a few months back to give EQ2 another shot and I must say they finally have a game on their hands. You no longer feel like you are being punished for picking EQ2 hehe. The game today is 10x easier to solo in now then it was back at release as well. So if you have a hard time finding a group (not a problem on some servers) your not without options.

I am now in my 40s on my swashy and I have done prob 80% of it solo and I did it pretty fast. The performance issues can only be answered by you though heh. If you have a high end machine then you can play it real smooth. If your running the same shit ya played EQ1 on then yeah EQ2 will rape your system.

You have 2 choices on character models. Normal, or Soga. Over all the Soga models I think are better, but some of them are real fucking ass. Ogres for example in soga are garbage.

Anyway... I recommend at least giving the game a try. It really is pretty good now.

[Glaive]

You know, I found with EQ2 that it wasn't as much the actual game mechanics that were the true turn-off for me, but all the little things. True, there were some really retarded design decisions made initially (like let's have essentially four classes sub-20), but I've been more than willing to come back and give the game a shot again as time has passed and people have gone on about the positive changes. However, the basic underlying things that I just can't get over are still there:

1) Horrible, horrible, horrible art and art design. The original character models sucked more ass than I can possibly describe. The SOGA models were at best OK depending on what race we're talking about. A majority of the armor graphics looked beyond idiotic. Once you get beyond the nifty effects of the graphics engine you realize that it's highly photorealistic recreations of shitty art. I just can't fundamentally get into a game where I feel like I look stupid. Moreover, there's no consistency in art design. The only things that are uniform the world over are the shitty models.

2) Lots of lame animations. Spellcasting animations are frequently stupid. Everyone has the same emote animations regardless of race or gender (maybe that changed, I don't know). Maybe this would be less sucky if the shared animations were actually cool, but they're not.

3) The world looks like it was created by a random terrain generator. There's little sense of flow or design to it.

4) The world feels SMALL. In WoW my character feels tiny compared to the environment. There is a very real and consistent sense of scale. I get none of that in EQ2.

5) Zoning -- I admit it, WoW spoiled me. I played EQ2 first, but once I gave WoW a try and then tried to go back I found myself looking at that loading screen and wanting to shove my fist through my monitor. It breaks immersion in more ways than I can count.

6) Pointless faction issues. I was in a pre-release guild for EQ2. Yeah, I know, shut up. We became a pretty close-knit group and were all excited about the game and discovering everything together, and then they announced that guilds would have to be registered with one city, cutting off multiple class options to one side or the other. As someone who's always been a big Paladin fan, this was a big deal. I was now faced with playing the class I wanted versus playing with my guild if we chose Freeport (which they did). Now, you might be saying "Hey Glaive, guilds in WoW are faction-based." True, but in WoW faction was less arbitrary. What bothered me in EQ2 was that you had to pick a faction and it was this big deal, but only when you were in those home cities. For most of the game everyone played in the same zones, could talk together, group together, and certainly didn't fight each othere. It was like a pansy-ass version of what WoW did. I would have preferred it had they either gone all the way and had a hardcore separation of the factions like WoW did, with a lot more storyline and separate quests and a far more involved sense of competition between the two, or simply aborted the idea altogether and made things like EQ.

7) Ratonga are an incredibly stupid idea.

8) Spending hours running around Qeynos hailing every fucking NPC to find quests sucks, and then doing it again every few levels to see if there are new ones sucks even more.

9) The sound effects are retarded. All the happy little bells and shit that tell you that you got a new ability or whatever make me feel like I'm watching Mr. Rogers.

10) You actually have to grind. Seriously grind. You can avoid that in WoW more than in any MMO I've ever seen. You can easily go 1-30 totally on quests, which is completely amazing (not saying everyone should, just that the option is great, I like options). In EQ2 I felt like I was grinding about 30 minutes into a character.

11) Music is incredibly lame. Seriously. Lame.

[Bristlebane]

Looks like they have merged some servers already.

http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/e...ory.id=servers