Anyone still playing EQII?

[Rorek]

I've taken a hiatus from EQII at the moment but it's an incredible game. Few months back when Grabbit and I switched from WoW we started Oath on Permafrost with some other WoW pals. Some of the board locals tagged up, like Cuppy and Soygen and a few others whom I can't really recall. Unfortunately due to time restrains I'm still unable to play, as much as I would like to. Got as high as lv 68 working on Hoo'loh helm quest and the Qeynos Claymore line (quite a good quest).

Looking to get back in once Echoes comes out.

[Cuppycake]

Is Grabbit still playing Rorek? I had a blast with y'all until I fell behind =/

[Kuro]

My guardian is still in oath, I feel bad about getting added and then not playing as much hehe.

[Zuuljin]

Originally Posted by Cuppycake

I have an active subscription but don't play anymore. I can't explain what it is with that game that bores me so quickly.

I know what bores me. Its the equipment. My last EQ2 posts awhile back showed how (while soloing) gear is just about worthless, as I was able to solo the exact same mobs, up to 2 levels higher then me, completely naked, except for a weapon. When you have no need to upgrade, theres not much reason to play.

My fav thing about EQ1 was actually raiding, so I could solo old stuff easier. I always judged my power by what old raid mob I could solo. But in EQ2, once you get about 8 levels above anything, you can solo it. So you have nothing to test your power against when you upgrade. And since mob power doesnt really get anymore powerful as the levels go up, its SSDD (same shit different day).

In EQ1 mobs gained new abilities the higher then went, from single hits, to quad hits, summoning, or different procs. Each fight seemed unique to the mob. In EQ2, each fight feels exactly the same as the rest. Theres so many friggin status effects, then when I see 20+ icons flashing on the side of my screen, I dont even bother to check what they are. It makes it hard to single out mobs when all you get is Mob A gives you a shit ton of effects, and mob B gives you a shit ton of different effects.

While I'm just rambling, another thing I liked about EQ1 that they did away with in EQ2 was only being able to have a certain amount of buffs. That added strategy to your buff lineup, as you had to pick the best buffs for the situation, and account for debuffs. Made fights more strategic IMO. Now that you can have a shit ton of effects on you, your more careless with your buffs, as long as you have everything available your gtg. No buff monitoring needed.

I need to play WoW so I can make a comparison, because from the little bit I'v played, it seems very similiar to EQ2, except different graphics. It still requires you being a monkey hitting ability buttons, soloing is just as easy, both games have instancing, etc. So I dunno.

[Moontayle]

Originally Posted by Zuuljin

I need to play WoW so I can make a comparison, because from the little bit I'v played, it seems very similiar to EQ2, except different graphics. It still requires you being a monkey hitting ability buttons, soloing is just as easy, both games have instancing, etc. So I dunno.

Having played both extensively, there is a very large comparison to be made between the games. However, EQ2 is suffering from bad press at release... Or as Rob Pardo explains...

"I think every game has this, where if you ship before it's ready, you're really going to cripple the chances for the success of that game," Pardo said. "But with massively multiplayer games, the stakes are much higher... People generally don't take a second look at your game. There's been a whole lot of MMO games that shipped early, admittedly so by their companies, and in a lot of those cases, you hear these great stories about how much more fun their game is [now]. Yeah, that's great, but no one actually goes back. If you ship before you're ready, you're going to cripple yourself. You're putting at risk the next five years of your product."

[Zuuljin]

I agree a bad launch cripples your product, but I'v heard from alot of people that they do in fact go back, but arnt retained. A large number in this thread alone. There is something that makes it fun at first, but loses its vigor after awhile. Noone has yet to pinpoint it exactly, and they usually start off by saying "I dont know why but...". IMO its the armor system, but I dont think anyone really knows.

[Coladar]

Went back to it in April after trying it out shortly after launch. On Permafrost as most people around here playing EQ2 are, and two-boxing with a Brigand and Bruiser, both of which are up to 45. On the last quest of the Bloodlines stuff, still having a blast. Gonna move on to the Splitpaw stuff, then off to the Desert of Flames expansion.

Having two characters, allowing for doing blue Heroic content even at 45, is really a great way to go. Fairly challenging, keeps you on your toes, and aside from raid content, every dungeon/quest is available before it's green.

[Abalieno]

I think Rob Pardo should be quoted for this (when thinking about EQ2), instead:

Control is king. Game control is taken for granted a lot of times. I remember on Warcraft 3 I could feel a little bit of lag on the mouse cursor, and I kept saying it to the programmer, but he kept saying he couldn’t see anything wrong. Finally he coded in a hardware cursor so we could run both cursors at the same time, and lo and behold there were three frames of lag. And that matters, it’s important. People will leave over that, but you’ll never know that is the reason.

And this:

The Blizzard polish. Polish is the word associated with us in reviews. There’s this big assumption that polish is something you do in the end. That we’re successful because we spend 6-12 months at the end polishing. We do get more time, but we do the polish right from the beginning. It’s a constant effort. You have to have a culture of polish. Everyone has to be bought into it and you have to constantly preach it. if you leave it to the end, it’ll be mor difficult.

You’ll get a lot of “why does it matter that this feature is polished? it’s so small.” But people notice 1000s of polished features, not the single polished feature.

Polish starts in the design process.

It's not true that a mmorpg is done if it had an horrible launch. See Eve-Online as a very good example.

There are many, many reasons why EQ2 still isn't so great as it could. As for WoW's success it's not just one element, but a number of important points all tied together (but EQ2's bloat may be a good main candidate against WoW's accessibility).

Polish, consistent art style, seamless world, low hardware requirements, streamlined design, better accessibility, better quests flow and direction, more responsive controls, fluid animations, uniqueness of each race, clean (and not sluggy) UI, great combat system design, unique classes... Should I continue?

[Zuuljin]

I actually had a thought about 2 boxing, since so many people do it. Why not offer a 2nd, "boxing" account for half price or something? Only playable from the same IP as your main (concurrently, so you dont have people buying their friends copies for half price).

Or integrate the boxing into the UI. Maybe let you hire NPC's to adventure with. It would be like a pet, but with player stats and abilities that you could control. Perhaps even allow you to hire a whole group to explore dungeons that are now empty.

And with the introduction of that, you could increase the raid size, to accomodate peoples hired hands. It wouldnt be unreasonable to have a 60 man raid.... being played by only 10 people. Certain encounters would be more specific, so you couldnt just zerg them with the helpers, but it might help out a raid if your missing 1 or 2 people.

[Needless]

I played the 30 day trial back when that was offered.
now that i'm on a mean machine, i can actually play the game with graphics.

Thinking about picking it up this friday when i get payed.
any recommended servers or anything?

[Coladar]

As already mentioned on this thread several times, go Permafrost. Most people playing EQ2 from these boards are on Perma.

[Citten]

Originally Posted by Zuuljin

I actually had a thought about 2 boxing, since so many people do it. Why not offer a 2nd, "boxing" account for half price or something? Only playable from the same IP as your main (concurrently, so you dont have people buying their friends copies for half price).

Or integrate the boxing into the UI. Maybe let you hire NPC's to adventure with. It would be like a pet, but with player stats and abilities that you could control. Perhaps even allow you to hire a whole group to explore dungeons that are now empty.

And with the introduction of that, you could increase the raid size, to accomodate peoples hired hands. It wouldnt be unreasonable to have a 60 man raid.... being played by only 10 people. Certain encounters would be more specific, so you couldnt just zerg them with the helpers, but it might help out a raid if your missing 1 or 2 people.

Good post, and agreed

[Rorek]

Originally Posted by Cuppycake

Is Grabbit still playing Rorek? I had a blast with y'all until I fell behind =/

No. He stopped playing shortly before I did.

[jazser]

I just typed up a book on why I left eq2, but I deleted it because basically it all boils down to this: EQ2 had decent mechanics, but I never had a carrot dangled in front of me that was worth working towards. No Thuderfury or Ashkandi or Misplaced Servo Arms to wield, no Dreadnaugt armor....everything looked like a minor upgrade to my basic level 30 quested gear (whatever that was called). I never once saw a character running around that impressed me...and lets face it, we play these games for 2 reasons 1) the challenge of taking down boss x and 2) displaying our ability to take down boss x

EQ2 just missed the boat on #2.

[Kuro]

One thing that does kinda kill my desire to level up is seeing huuuuuuuuuuge changes to classes and combat structure fling about. While a lot of them are for the better, I get leery about leveling up a character when the Dev's have expressed their willingness to bring the wrecking ball down.

That's kinda the reason why I quit DAoC