EQ2: First Look at Shard of Fear

[Laerazi]

Originally Posted by Tarrant220

Rofl...did you really just say that?

Um, could you name me a model that is textured purely with the same repeating texture tile? Pics would be nice too, because I don't really recall any. I'm guessing you didn't understand what I meant; I DID NOT mean they reuse the same skins for models.

[Ssinurn]

If it's skinned like the drakota in Deathtoll then it may be finished. The one in there is like a purple, shimmering, moving texture all over. I can't tell from the screenshot but it looks similar.

[Zhaun's_Shade]

Originally Posted by Trebla

Avatar of Innoruuk != Innoruuk.

In EQ1, the Avatars often were visual copies of their gods (Avatar of Fear, Avatar of War before RZ got revamped in PoP), but in EQ2, the Avatars are clearly defined as pious members of mortal races picked by their gods to be their avatars.

Not saying that Avatar of Fear doesn't look awful (it really does), nor can I even tell what the fleck it's supposed to be, but sticking with the lore they've established, the avatars should look more like mortal races than gods.

Ok, that explains Innuruuk's Avatar, but doesn't explain Cazic's, shouldn't his just be a pimped out Iksar or Erudite then, rather than a pathetic attempt at copying the original Cazic-Thule?

Also, drake, dragon or wombat, that critter with the wings looks awful textured like that.

[Trebla]

Originally Posted by Zhaun's_Shade

Ok, that explains Innuruuk's Avatar, but doesn't explain Cazic's, shouldn't his just be a pimped out Iksar or Erudite then, rather than a pathetic attempt at copying the original Cazic-Thule?

Yes, yes he should. Even if they wanted to make a pathetic attempt to copy CT, I'm sure many people would be happy with it... but that current picture... ouch... I'd hate to be worshiping that!.

[Kobalt]

Originally Posted by Zhaun's_Shade

Ok, that explains Innuruuk's Avatar, but doesn't explain Cazic's, shouldn't his just be a pimped out Iksar or Erudite then, rather than a pathetic attempt at copying the original Cazic-Thule?

Yeah this avatars aren't supposed to look like the gods thing all of a sudden sounds like bs the art team(all 2 of them it seems) put out so they wouldn't have to put into too much of an effort as usual.

I understand why bristlebane looks like a halfling and mithaniel marr looks like a barbarian(they could have done a little better job with mithaniel though).

But even in the concept art inny is all of a sudden just a troll

[kasey]

Well i am willing to bet these models are final. At least the Cazic one, it has been posted before several times and you would think they wouldnt leave an ugly placeholder which had some work going into it for so long. But this undermines my position as people are already thinking they are not done(shows the state they are in). Also its not vetry constructive to argue about this but i would like to point out its pretty possible we saw the final models here considering the previous stuff has been similar.

Why defend eq2. Just because they have good intentions doesnt mean you have to protect them in any way. Every single game i can think of was destroyed, beside eq1. Every single universe/IP/brand was destroyed beside eq1 by Sony Online Entertainment (even star wars).

Just look at that model. I dont know when eq1 Cazic Thule was made, may be 1999/2000? Thats like 8 years ago and they give us these handicapped retard down syndrom models who dont look 1/100 as cool as the original. This is so gay, it makes look David Hasselhoff like the Marlboro Man. Same with Dracoliche roflmao.

This is crap, yes i am spoiled for wanting non crap i guess. What SoE needs badly is opening up an art division in korea or something. Man even the people drawing Hitler Penis Horses on 4chan are BETTER(most of the time). Every shitting dicknipple i stumbled upon was drawn better then this multimillion dollar crapfest called eq2. SOrry i cant make the contrast more clear.



Aalso i apologize to the eq2 team for giving bad publicity incase these mobs are just placeholders and magically turn into something cool /laugh And why has Cazic a human model? He was more of a Pyramid upside down, a block of musclesb getting bigger as you look up, god damn .... just look at it .. omfg..

my associations as soon i saw it:
"the thing from the swamp"
"someone got a shovel?"
"why did someone photoshop the name AvatarofFear above mudBOY?? "

not Avatar of the mighty god of fear




Sony invented devolution?

[Stakkato Allegra]

Is that a baby dragon I see underneath her belly?

[Trebla]

Originally Posted by Kobalt

Yeah this avatars aren't supposed to look like the gods thing all of a sudden sounds like bs the art team(all 2 of them it seems) put out so they wouldn't have to put into too much of an effort as usual.

Actually, that's been the "lore" since before the game released (though the Avatar of Flame sounded pretty impressive, so it wasn't absolute), so it's not a new thing, whether they planned it all along and did it that way so they wouldn't have to do work 3 years down the road? Maybe.

Either way, if that CT model is final, there's just no excuse for how bad it looks. I can't imagine even the most blind of art designers looking at it and saying "good enough" let alone "that's awesome enough to be a god."

[Ssinurn]

Originally Posted by kasey

This is crap, yes i am spoiled for wanting non crap i guess. What SoE needs badly is opening up an art division in korea or something. Man even the people drawing Hitler Penis Horses on 4chan are BETTER(most of the time). Every shitting dicknipple i stumbled upon was drawn better then this multimillion dollar crapfest called eq2. SOrry i cant make the contrast more clear.

SOE already has an asian art division. The team that did SOGA as well as Fallen Dynasty.

I'm guessing there are some severe technical limitations to what they have to work with and that is a large reason for all of the art looking as it does. I bet if they could do it all over they would have designed their art /pipeline entirely differently.

Also Lyvdro (among others) stated at past Fan Faires about the art coping and reusing dungeons models that we could have a choice less content/more unique models or more content / less unique models. Since most endgamers already clamor for more they choose to reuse art alot.

[Ssinurn]

Originally Posted by Kendricke

To be fair, they never officially said the gods would never return or that there would never be PVP. They've been correcting folks who say that for a couple of years now.

Actually I wasn't in the summit - I came a day later, and saw how drunk all of you were, but nonetheless I do distinctly remember being told multiple times there would never be epics as doing 24 unique quests as well as 24 unique graphics would be far too much work for content that couldn't be consumed by everyone. (I.E only Necromancers would ever see the Necromancer quest and so on.)

Most times at Fan Faires they say "probably not" and not "never" since they have gotten burned for saying that before, but you still get that finality of "well not in the next 5 years". But they have already shocked us and reversed most of this already.

[Braen]

But that was also when they were on 6 month development cycles for their expansions. They have changed that to an expansion will have a year of development now. EoF was the last of the 6 month expansions. RoK has had a year, so now they had more time for the epics.

[Moontayle]

And EoF was actually more like 8 or 9 months. I believe they pushed back the initial release window due to the new philosophy.

[Kobalt]

Originally Posted by Trebla

Actually, that's been the "lore" since before the game released (though the Avatar of Flame sounded pretty impressive, so it wasn't absolute), so it's not a new thing, whether they planned it all along and did it that way so they wouldn't have to do work 3 years down the road? Maybe.

That still doesn't make sense to me since neither cazic or solusek look like any of the races. I mean if cazic was a big iksar or lizardman it would make sense but instead it looks like they were working on a unique look and just failed at their job completely.

I usually don't nitpick about the art in this game but god some of this shit is just awfu, and I hope to god the soga team does alot of stuff for rok.

To be fair the avatar of flame does actually look pretty good. You can tell not too much effort was involved but it looks decent :
Allakhazam's Magical Realm: Everquest II

[Draegan]

That avatar looks like it was drawn with crayons then digitally copied as a texture.

[Asmadai]

I'm glad EQ2 doesn't look as bad on my computer as 95% of the screen shots posted of it on this forum make it out to look.