EQ/EQ2 - Living Legacy. Accounts reactivated from today until July 25th!

[dandrools]

Originally Posted by daishinzo

So about 8 hours in and I'm almost 44 all solo. The defiant gear is really kickass and after learning how to aug those crafted rings my HP is pretty damn high for the level.

I do wish I saw more people but the only zone I've really been through with people was blightfire moors which took me from 25-35 in like an hour. Stonehive is kinda meh with all the caster mobs and I couldn't find dulak ;O. I'm in skyshrine now but can't decide where I want to go after.

My bard is super sexy though now. When can you pass the 255 stat cap? I've been sitting at 255 in almost everything for a few levels now and once I grow into this tier of defiant I'll definitely hit it.

If anyone wants to start fresh on bertox I'd be happy to help them out if they are going to play for a bit and it'd be quite easy to catch up to me. Would be fun to get a duo or something going =]

When you start leveling over 60 the cap will go up by 5 with each level. You'll also be able to start on planar power AA to add 5 to the cap per rank, if you want. The first 5 ranks are pretty worth it for only 2 AA apiece, after that it jumps to 5 AA apiece and the value drops considerably. IIRC you'll be able to do one rank of planar power for each level you gain, so you can only have planar power 4 at level 64, and so forth.

There's a disconnect somewhere in the 70's. Max level is 80 but there are only 15 ranks of planar power.

[Zimphultron]

Originally Posted by fucker

whats your name Zimp? im going to move to AB in few days since Tribunal is pretty much dead for euros and i can give ya a hand somehow

Hehe, the name on AB is Zimp exactly! It's my mule though. I have a 75 Mage named Zimph on Luclin. I logged in and tried to exp to 80 yesterday, and that's lameness.

[Isuldor]

Anyone know what happened to http://d7w.critical.ne.jp/progress.htm? It had guild progression records for PoP; information that could be added to Maeryn's guild progression list, if someone has a mirror.

Wayback machine hasn't got it unfortunately.

[FulorianC]

nm

[Zefah]

Originally Posted by Neric

EQ1 is fucking tough for returning players. Almost impossible to play with 320 AAs and 7k hp when the game is ballanced for 2k AAs and 25k hp.

Back at lvl 40 I had around 800 hp and mobs were hitting for 40-60 in the easy areas of Guk. Now at lvl 76 I have 8.5k buffed and mobs hit for 1.2k while everything else is pretty much the same. Absolutely zero margin for error.

I kind of disagree that is "tough" for returning players. Then again, it all depends on perspective. If you are playing Everquest with a WoW/EQ2/etc... mindset then it will definitely appear daunting, but if you are a returning player you will remember how tough Everquest could be. In comparison to the old days, the game is a ton easier and more convenient.

I came back in March as a lvl 67 Enchanter with 80 AAs. I got to lvl 80 in May, and now I have over 600 AAs. I got to lvl 80 in groups exclusively, but since then I have been soloing a lot to get AAs. I can get 8-12 AAs in 30 minutes with Lesson of the Devoted up at the spot I solo in, and I know other classes can do similarly well. Thanks to the recent exp changes, AA exp is good even without Lesson.

Recently I have been working on getting my Crystallos Key and farming LGuk with my friends. Gears is pretty easy to come by as well. I came back with like 4500hp / 7000mp unbuffed at lvl 67, and now I have 11,000hp / 13,000mp unbuffed at lvl 80. I still need plenty of upgrades and am missing some easy-to-get augments as well.

Death is pretty much trivial now with the guild lobby and corpse summoning. CR is generally pretty easy in most zones as well. Sure it is less forgiving than WoW or EQ2, but compared to old Everquest, it is no problem at all.

It might depend on your server and class, but I find myself having no lack of things to do as an 80 Enchanter on Fennin Ro. I can usually find a group, and when I can't I can solo and get AA's / items. I admit that it took a few days to get used to things, but I think the changes that have been made to the game make it relatively easy for returning players to get back into the swing of things considering how long the game has been around.

[Wash]

I'm not surprised that EQ2 failed so massively. After playing for this last month, I understand how it fails in almost every way. At the risk of drawing flames from the fanboys, I will now explain the ways that EQ2 sucks. No, I am not a WoW fanboy h8ing on your precious game. WoW sucks too and the people who play it are airheaded fucktwats who should bend over and suck their own taint. That is how useless WoW players are, and they're helping to kill the MMOG genre just by being their useless cunt selves. That's not sarcasm. They really are. Ok?

1) I have, as a level 35 monk, 14 different damage skills. 14. I'm not talking level 1 skills that do 5 damage, either. No. I'm talking 14 different buttons that I need to press every single fight. That is not an exaggeration. If I were to use my heroic chains, it would be 16, since the EQ2 devs thought it made sense to make a taunt be the end skill in my heroic chain.

That is fucking ridiculous. 16 buttons per fight is fucking ridiculous. It's not a matter of taste or complexity. What it is is a massive game design failure. Do you people at SOE think at all?

Oh, I almost forgot. They're all on a 30 second timer, so you need to use all of them every fight. You don't have a choice.

2) It's 2008, and still, the game is riddled with bugs. The graphics crash so constantly, I have to window in and out (hitting ALT-ENTER is the only way to fix them) 4-5 times in a trip through a zone. This is not an exaggeration either.

I know, you're going to tell me to update my drivers or blah blah blah. I've tried that and I'm not going to do it again. Every other game I play works fine, it's only EQ2 that shits the bed constantly. Shits. The. Bed.

3) Everyone has said this. Literally everyone has said this. But it's still true so I'm going to say it too. The character models look like shit. No, they don't look better when they're moving (like some people said early on: screenshots look bad, but you need to see them in the game!). They look like claymation shit.

I don't care that everyone else looks like shit, but I do care that my own guy looks like shit. Coolness is part of the world, devs. The way things look is part of the coolness. Figure it out. You suck.

4) Gameplay (when I'm not mashing 14 DIFFERENT BUTTONS A FIGHT JESUS CHRIST) is even worse in groups. In original EQ, I prided myself on being a good group member. Being the guy who always did the right thing, whatever. I'm a loser, I get off on being good at my games.

The few groups I had the patience to sit through were worse than WoW, and WoW is the bottom of the barrel. WoW is the death of good games as we know it and EQ2, in its feeble attempt to imitate WoW, took it a step further. It's a nonstop lightshow, pulling 3-10 mobs at a time and demolishing them in a flash of light that I can't see through.

That is not an RPG. That is a fucking arcade game.

5) There's no way to turn off the lightshow. No way. If you slide every graphics slider to 0, it still has no effect. The mindless fireworks continue. Like most new games it was probably designed to be played in the third person, where it's slightly less blinding. Still not an excuse to not be able to shut that shit off. When I play EQ, shutting that shit off is the first thing I do, so I can focus on my group and my game.

6) The ridiculous, needless complexity is everywhere in this game, even in tradeskills. And, since it's buggy, I can't tell what's a bug and what's a feature. Tonight I tried over, and over, and over, to twink one of my alts by making him his level 1-5 combat skills. Nothing doing. There is apparently no way to sort through their stupid fucking obfuscated menu system for me to find my level 1-5 brigand abilities. None. I tried it in, I am not shitting you, 15-20 different combinations of the menus. But it is so largely overcomplicated, I have no idea if it's a bug or if I'm just not getting something about the stupid tradeskill system. This is as a mid-level crafter.

7) Everything is overengineered to absurd proportions. The game devs decided that people had been playing EQ for too long "not as it was intended". So they fixed this, and they fixed it good. Every... single... thing you can think of has been overengineered in this game. From the run speed, to mobs no longer giving exp or loot if you get too far away from them, to the buff system.

On my shaman, I ressed a newbie for the first time, and I was pretty psyched, just cause it was my first time casting the spell. Then I tried to toss him a buff... woops! Can't. All buffs are locked and restricted to your group or raid members. I could only stand there with my cock in my hand. It's nice to be able to buff a newbie once in a while, are you feeling me you useless EQ2 devs? It's one of the nice things about playing a class that can buff. I hope you choke in your sleep.

Those are just the first 7 things I could think of. By this time tomorrow I could probably find 14 more, but I'm tired.

This game is a massive pile of fail. It fails on every level. It fails in ways I didn't think a game could fail. It fails. It fails.

I hate you fuckers for using the EQ name, I hate you for your draconian and fascist game design ideas, but mostly, I hate you for destroying the EQ franchise so completely that it can never be brought back. You suck, and I mean you, individually, as people, the people who manage SOE. I hope you get raped.

[Zefah]

Originally Posted by Wash

Long, awesome post.

I completely agree with everything in your post. Everquest 2, WoW and most other "modern" MMORPGs are completely 'overengineered', draconian, fascist, whatever. They are just not fun to play. They are spam fests where you fight tons of mobs at once and watch light shows. Everything has to be fast with instant gratification and there is also only one way to play.

This is why I am playing the original Everquest and enjoying it. Unfortunately, most of the planet doesn't agree with me and you and they actually enjoy shit like EQ2 and WoW. Oh well...

[fucker]

Originally Posted by Wash

angry stuff

as much as i agree with what you said, here's a suggestion...

[Digits]

Not that I disagree with any points you brought up, but the stretch to 40 is the worst section of the game ability wise. They pile on all the abilities they can because they want to set up a baseline for the rest of the game...I found myself getting a new, vital spell every level on my Necro until the 30s. After that point I added maybe 2-3 key abilities over the next 40 levels, and the rest were situational (I never used them). Something that you have to accept with EQ2 is that you either deal with the abilities via macros, or just don't play the game. I had my necro set up so that I only had 5 keys to press in a given fight, and I only sacrificed a minimal amount of efficiency. Without even looking at the Monk ability sheet I guarantee you that you could take those 14 abilities and turn them into 6 macros. Does that excuse the developers? Fuck no, they're idiots, but you can enjoy the game much more with some tinkering.

And if you pride yourself on being a good group player, EQ2 really does showcase when people use their skills efficiently and intelligently. I thought that my damage never mattered until I saw a parse that showed me at the absolute top of the damage meters, despite being the lowest level in the group. The only problem is EQ2 has a terrible time balancing 'easy' and 'impossible' settings for groups.

I never encountered crippling bugs, ever, but if you want to turn off the particle effects just turn the slider to 0. If you're still getting cockled by sparklies you missed the proper slider. I think environmental effects is the key slider to completely remove particles, but the downside is you miss out on natural fire and water effects.

It's not as bad as you make it out to be, but everything you brought up is a serious mark against the game. Over engineered, indeed.

[Kreugen]

I give my advice to anyone who wants to play EQ2: Don't play any melee.

Okay, if the idea of mashing around 15 abilities every single time they pop on 10-30 seconds intervals is okay with you, then I suppose you can go ahead and play a melee.

Otherwise, do yourself a favor and play a caster. You'll mostly be doing the same thing, only with a lot less redundancy. I had a lot of fun with a Fury. Of course, its the second most popular class for a reason. (the first being Wizard still I think)

Anyway, I've already bashed EQ2's combat to death over the years so not much else to say other than I agree.

However, wow ain't a lightshow, you do actually use the majority of your skills situationally. Especially in PVP.

[Ham n Cheese]

Yeah his post pretty much summed up why I've never played for more than a month at a time (go back, realize its shit, quit). Honestly EQ1 is still the best game available for PVE imo, I love arenas in WoW though and world PVP a lot of the time, but i could not stand grouping in that game

[Dashal]

I got a Berserker to max level with my basic Epic. Yes it's true, way too many skills that amount to "Do damage". Werent they supposed to streamline that though? Whatever happened to that?

[Digits]

Originally Posted by Dashal

I got a Berserker to max level with my basic Epic. Yes it's true, way too many skills that amount to "Do damage". Werent they supposed to streamline that though? Whatever happened to that?

I don't think there's an official story as to why they dropped it, but I suspect that when Gallenite left the EQ2 design team he took the best support with him. Most likely SOE decided the effort to possibly improve the core of their game by a modest amount wasn't worth the risk and effort. They've attempted to completely redo their combat engine two or three times by now, and every time they piss people off and never fix the problem.

EQ2 has to be on bare bones support to get expansions out once a year, and to provide moderate amounts of Live content. SOE knows they have to nail the Agency and the new DC mmo out the gate or they're fucked, as the EQs will only continue to lose market share and a third round of failure will end their funding, and are no doubt funneling every competent employee to those projects.

[Vishnu]

Originally Posted by Wash

I hope you get raped.

Amen.. fuck eq2

[OhSeven]

So this all ends tommorow. How many of you actually resubbed?

I resubbed for at least a month merely for the free xpacs.