I think the biggest hurdle that EQ2 faced, was that it wasnt really a successor to Everquest, but then, SOE didnt actually create Everquest, they bought it, and then went all expansionitis with it, never seen a game with so many expansions, and its something they also tried to do with Everquest 2, the problems in Everquest 2 were effectively there even in the beta, which i did try, and later when it actually released, but at no time did the game have that Everquest 'feel' despite everything they attempted with it, it just wasnt Everquest, but it was trying to be, only not in a good way. Perhaps Everquest 2's ultimate failure was inevitable, its not so much that the game had lost direction, but that the direction was never really there in the first place, and, again, it was a game that relied heavily on instances, something Everquest itself did not. But what ultimately hurt Everquest 2 the most, was really the gameplay, they would really have been better off just copying Everquests gameplay, but in trying to create something new, they managed to ruin what they had, it just didnt work, and several reworkings of the system later, it still doesnt. It would have helped if they had understood the original more, but after they gradually ruined Everquest from planes of power onwards, although personally i saw the writing on the wall when shadows of luclin released, i have no confidence in SOE's ability to create a credible MMO based on Everquest in any form.
It is true that the development team did not want to call it Everquest 2, and the game probably had been more sucessfull if they had called it something else. But nevertheless the old EQ gameplay style is a thing from the past, regardless how fun you thought it was (and I did) when you were younger and had a lot of time and everyone played EQ because there was not anything else, that kind of game is simply not marketable anymore. Had there been a easier and more accessible alternative to EQ in the heyday, EQ would never had become as big as it was.
Instead of attacking a game you obsviously do not play anymore why not talk about the hard core old style game you currently play? It will be interesting to see how EQ next turns out, but that is for 2014 most likely.
Who knew a game could be up and running with 9 expansions for 8 years and still be a failure. I guess you learn something new everyday on mmorpg.com.
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.' -Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid." -Luke McKinney
Originally posted by ArChWindThe mercs added you bought were suppose to be better than the ones in the agme but I am not sure that worked as intended so yes they did add a bit of pay to win there.
are you referring to "COE Collectors edition" mercs?
It is true that the development team did not want to call it Everquest 2, and the game probably had been more sucessfull if they had called it something else.
I don't know about all that but I do think they did a piss poor job of tying EQ2 to Everquest. If you want to appeal to players of Everquest you need to make sure SOME places in the game resemble the Norrath that we'd grown attached to and had fond memories of.
Instead of doing that they rebuilt everything from scratch and none of it even remotely resembled the Norrath we had called home for years.
I really hope the EQ Next team realizes how indelible some of those old towns and landmarks were and do the smart thing by simply upgrading the graphical detail without radically departing from the original designs.
I think EQ2 to this day is a very solid mmo.To me it was just the fact of releasing at the same time (within 2 weeks) of WOW.Once that game started to grow,EQ2 started making changes and was more solo friendly and easier.It ended up being too much like WOW,when it should've went more it's own path.However they probably retained more subs by becoming more like WOW.
If EQ2 would have came out somewhere between Lotro and Rift,thing's may have been much brighter for them.The game to me is still gob's of fun and I love the crafting.Just seem's like there was wasted potential here.
Some day I'm going to put a sword through your eye and out the back of your skull!
It is true that the development team did not want to call it Everquest 2, and the game probably had been more sucessfull if they had called it something else.
I don't know about all that but I do think they did a piss poor job of tying EQ2 to Everquest. If you want to appeal to players of Everquest you need to make sure SOME places in the game resemble the Norrath that we'd grown attached to and had fond memories of.
Instead of doing that they rebuilt everything from scratch and none of it even remotely resembled the Norrath we had called home for years.
I really hope the EQ Next team realizes how indelible some of those old towns and landmarks were and do the smart thing by simply upgrading the graphical detail without radically departing from the original designs.
i agree with you that EQ2 felt disconnected from Everquest
there were connections w lore and heritage quests - but EQ2 largely felt like a new mmo world
personally, I didnt mind the new direction but it was a turnoff to some EQ fans
It is true that the development team did not want to call it Everquest 2, and the game probably had been more sucessfull if they had called it something else.
I don't know about all that but I do think they did a piss poor job of tying EQ2 to Everquest. If you want to appeal to players of Everquest you need to make sure SOME places in the game resemble the Norrath that we'd grown attached to and had fond memories of.
Instead of doing that they rebuilt everything from scratch and none of it even remotely resembled the Norrath we had called home for years.
I really hope the EQ Next team realizes how indelible some of those old towns and landmarks were and do the smart thing by simply upgrading the graphical detail without radically departing from the original designs.
i agree with you that EQ2 felt disconnected from Everquest
there were connections w lore and heritage quests - but EQ2 largely felt like a new mmo world
personally, I didnt mind the new direction but it was a turnoff to some EQ fans
I didn't mind that the landscape was different. There was a cataclysm and 500 years of recovery after that event. The world was radically damaged, torn apart, and cities were destroyed. There was a lot of lore that explained everything to tie it all together.
What I do dislike are the silly Marketplace items that really have no place in the game whatsoever. I suppose that was my #2 gripe with the SC system. In reality though, it has such a minor impact that its easily ignored.
I really, really hope that EQNext works out. Its too bad we have to wait until later this year for Fan Faire. My biggest concern is that SmokeJumper has had his paws in it from the ground up. I have fundamental issues with him. He's more of a features guy, in a money-grubbing greasy Walmart way. /sigh Only thing to do is wait and see.
I think if you have to say is EverQuest 2 a more complete game now, then that is true as EQ2 was rushed to launch missing most features and was a complete disaster of a launch that like a week later got forgotten about due to WoW being much more complete.
However like SWG, PS and EQ all games SOE driven into the ground like a year or two later, it was the original concept that I buy into. I play a game I originally like and then SOE always has to then completely change it in the wrong direction. EQ2 is not a successful game, it didn't sell very well, it never had many subscribers after the first month and I have my doubts about how many people actually spend money on their F2P model that is so restrictive you'd rather just not play.
I loved the original concept back in beta, it filled me with such hope, it was mind blowning back then just how good EQ2 was graphically. Sadly though they launched with like 20-40 servers and after a month they were dead, I found myself grinding on crabs and stuff by the beach most the time because I couldn't find groups. However in beta when it was just one server and people were excited for the game, you could get groups all the time and it was the most amazing grouping experience I've ever had in an MMO. It's that promise of a beta that puts people in a mind set that they can allow these things that are wrong with the game, however once launched and people don't want to play and quit, suddenly all that promise is gone and it becomes a depressing experience.
The other thing I don't understand is I loved the original art style of the game back in the alpha shots of like 2002 and then at some point it changed and it didn't look nearly as appealing. I still liked the look of it being a more realistic looking fantasy game, it was much more gritty and a darker more frightening place to be than most fantasy games. Weird things like making the character models so ugly, there was a patch before launch in beta that made Human females look like they've been taking drugs, they never fixed that weird drugged up eye look they've had and still have. They put the Asian models in there but they just look ridiculous..... I don't get why they cannot spend the time to redo some of the character models.
That though is SOE all over, they'd rather rush out new poor content than take the time to create something meaningful. They don't seem to get that an MMO is a service, it isn't just a game, the whole game needs upkeep, you cannot just focus on slapping newer stuff over the old.
I don't like how it's a solo game now, all they ever had to do was merge servers but that time is gone now. I don't like how they got rid of the death penalty, that made things scary, it gave the game tension and made your heart pump, that is what makes combat exciting. Now it is a bore where I can solo 10 mobs at once and if I die, whocares? It is no good putting challenging stuff at the end game in the form of Raiding because I'll never get to it as I'm so bored of the game being so easy that I quit way before then.
What makes Dayz? Perma Death. Now I'm not saying every game needs it or needs a harsh death penalty as games like TF2 would suck if you lost all your items every time you died. However certain games bennefit from it and EQ2 was one of them, without it I just find stuff boring. I'm constantly being rewarded and it means nothing as it wasn't hard to achieve. I remember when a chest drop was an amazing time where everyone in your group couldn't wait to see what was dropped. Now for one you#d be on your own but it's like loot drops over and over and over and it becomes boring to the point you ignore it now. They simplified crafting too which is another gripe because it used to be time consuming and rewarding to make stuff, now it's so bloated and worthless because the process is easy. It used to feel like a whole other part of the game you could devote so much time to, it doesn't have that impact any more.
I don't like the new music, it's very generic, the older stuff had such a distinct stuff. It felt dark, eerie but often magical and it reminded me more of like listening to real classical music. I could imagine it being in the Tudor period or something, where as now the music has changed into that boring generic fantasy drone we have in games today.
I don't like how the art style as gone to this very cartoony and more unrealistic fantasy setting that like Warhammer and Warcraft has made popular. I miss that more realistic style that even EverQuest very crudely had as well. The game has lost that dark gritty look it used to have, it's lost the fear of exploring the game world. It is like I loved the feel of Oblivion, I know a lot of people didn't but it felt much more real, I loved the whole cult story and setting. That didn't exist in Skyrim or Morrowind which felt very alien like and that is how EQ2 has gone now.
For me in the beta I was young, I probably had unrealistic dreams of the game staying in beta another year and SOE working with the community to get it to a place they wanted. I had dreams of them removing the doors in the cities (which recently happen but the new look and music sucks) and traveling by real boats through the water ways. I had dreams of not blicking on bells and having boat travel which the beta did have at some parts before it was patched out. I wanted to travel from island to island like WoWs boat ride between the two conts so it felt much more real. Instead SOE went the other direction for the most part and rushed the game to release with not even having mail in it.
Also what happened to all that amazing armour and clothing that was in the alpha? All that seemed to go by the time the beta hit and we had like 2 or 3 sets of armour and I remember that never changing for years.
I so wish someone other than SOE was in charge of this game and could have taken it down the right direction. I'll miss the heavy grouped based MMO it used to be and hate the solo WoW clone it has become.
I have to say also why weren't the sound effects ever fixed? It always sounds like they were recorded in an echoey studio, they never sound convincing and the footsteps are so loud.
Originally posted by tixylix I have to say also why weren't the sound effects ever fixed? It always sounds like they were recorded in an echoey studio, they never sound convincing and the footsteps are so loud.
much of that is customizable in game options
i agree by default, footsteps are too loud but you can soften them or not have them at all
options > sound > advanced > max footstep distance
Originally posted by tixylix I have to say also why weren't the sound effects ever fixed? It always sounds like they were recorded in an echoey studio, they never sound convincing and the footsteps are so loud.
much of that is customizable in game options
i agree by default, footsteps are too loud but you can soften them or not have them at all
options > sound > advanced > max footstep distance
I know it is a small thing but it is something that has a large impact.
It's another thing though that makes me wonder how soon after a failed launch do SOE give up on their games? Maybe they don't and they just have idiots in charge of their games, I know they have or had the producer of Planetside in charge of EQ2... I mean wasn't releasing an untested poor expansion 3 months after launch, the bending and BFRs warning enough?
I can only funnel the blame down to Smedley though, he's in charge and even though lots of games have started out being these innovative potential filled titles, they quickly become anything but. The odd thing I find is the community always see it and SOE don't listen, they just go for a market that doesn't exist, rather than the one they're hitting. I mean EVE was never a massive hit, however CCP knew their market and they caused it to grow. To this day they're the only major MMO developer at least that has managed their game properly, they've just stuck to the original idea. They've had failures like Walking in stations, however they've accepted that and focused on what people want. SOE however cannot accept their failures and then try to build upon the failures that no one wanted.
You know what I would have done in SOES shoes?
- Seen BFRs didn't work in tested like EVERYONE SAID ON THE FUCKING FORUMS.
- Luclin and PoP wouldn't have even happened.
- EQ2 would have been given more time, which proper management of older games would have allowed for.
- SWG, pushed it unti November 2003 so major features would have been in like mounts and player cities. Never added Jedi until the game is stable, not caused JTLS to destroy the ground game, no CU, no NGE etc etc.
- PS - no CC and no BFRs
- DCUO - Maybe like launch the game with a working UI and content?
It's so obvious and it isn't like things you wouldn't have know till after release of these things, players always complain about them on forums. Planetside 2 is the latest thing about how base design sucks, it's not balanced what so ever, no meta game, too many servers, the hex system sucks, weapons are so boring etc etc.
I think if you have to say is EverQuest 2 a more complete game now, then that is true as EQ2 was rushed to launch missing most features and was a complete disaster of a launch that like a week later got forgotten about due to WoW being much more complete.
However like SWG, PS and EQ all games SOE driven into the ground like a year or two later, it was the original concept that I buy into. I play a game I originally like and then SOE always has to then completely change it in the wrong direction. EQ2 is not a successful game, it didn't sell very well, it never had many subscribers after the first month and I have my doubts about how many people actually spend money on their F2P model that is so restrictive you'd rather just not play.
I loved the original concept back in beta, it filled me with such hope, it was mind blowning back then just how good EQ2 was graphically. Sadly though they launched with like 20-40 servers and after a month they were dead, I found myself grinding on crabs and stuff by the beach most the time because I couldn't find groups. However in beta when it was just one server and people were excited for the game, you could get groups all the time and it was the most amazing grouping experience I've ever had in an MMO. It's that promise of a beta that puts people in a mind set that they can allow these things that are wrong with the game, however once launched and people don't want to play and quit, suddenly all that promise is gone and it becomes a depressing experience.
The other thing I don't understand is I loved the original art style of the game back in the alpha shots of like 2002 and then at some point it changed and it didn't look nearly as appealing. I still liked the look of it being a more realistic looking fantasy game, it was much more gritty and a darker more frightening place to be than most fantasy games. Weird things like making the character models so ugly, there was a patch before launch in beta that made Human females look like they've been taking drugs, they never fixed that weird drugged up eye look they've had and still have. They put the Asian models in there but they just look ridiculous..... I don't get why they cannot spend the time to redo some of the character models.
That though is SOE all over, they'd rather rush out new poor content than take the time to create something meaningful. They don't seem to get that an MMO is a service, it isn't just a game, the whole game needs upkeep, you cannot just focus on slapping newer stuff over the old.
I don't like how it's a solo game now, all they ever had to do was merge servers but that time is gone now. I don't like how they got rid of the death penalty, that made things scary, it gave the game tension and made your heart pump, that is what makes combat exciting. Now it is a bore where I can solo 10 mobs at once and if I die, whocares? It is no good putting challenging stuff at the end game in the form of Raiding because I'll never get to it as I'm so bored of the game being so easy that I quit way before then.
What makes Dayz? Perma Death. Now I'm not saying every game needs it or needs a harsh death penalty as games like TF2 would suck if you lost all your items every time you died. However certain games bennefit from it and EQ2 was one of them, without it I just find stuff boring. I'm constantly being rewarded and it means nothing as it wasn't hard to achieve. I remember when a chest drop was an amazing time where everyone in your group couldn't wait to see what was dropped. Now for one you#d be on your own but it's like loot drops over and over and over and it becomes boring to the point you ignore it now. They simplified crafting too which is another gripe because it used to be time consuming and rewarding to make stuff, now it's so bloated and worthless because the process is easy. It used to feel like a whole other part of the game you could devote so much time to, it doesn't have that impact any more.
I don't like the new music, it's very generic, the older stuff had such a distinct stuff. It felt dark, eerie but often magical and it reminded me more of like listening to real classical music. I could imagine it being in the Tudor period or something, where as now the music has changed into that boring generic fantasy drone we have in games today.
I don't like how the art style as gone to this very cartoony and more unrealistic fantasy setting that like Warhammer and Warcraft has made popular. I miss that more realistic style that even EverQuest very crudely had as well. The game has lost that dark gritty look it used to have, it's lost the fear of exploring the game world. It is like I loved the feel of Oblivion, I know a lot of people didn't but it felt much more real, I loved the whole cult story and setting. That didn't exist in Skyrim or Morrowind which felt very alien like and that is how EQ2 has gone now.
For me in the beta I was young, I probably had unrealistic dreams of the game staying in beta another year and SOE working with the community to get it to a place they wanted. I had dreams of them removing the doors in the cities (which recently happen but the new look and music sucks) and traveling by real boats through the water ways. I had dreams of not blicking on bells and having boat travel which the beta did have at some parts before it was patched out. I wanted to travel from island to island like WoWs boat ride between the two conts so it felt much more real. Instead SOE went the other direction for the most part and rushed the game to release with not even having mail in it.
Also what happened to all that amazing armour and clothing that was in the alpha? All that seemed to go by the time the beta hit and we had like 2 or 3 sets of armour and I remember that never changing for years.
I so wish someone other than SOE was in charge of this game and could have taken it down the right direction. I'll miss the heavy grouped based MMO it used to be and hate the solo WoW clone it has become.
You are living in the past. Why talk about events that happened over 8 years ago? The game has evolved, and the community has grown with the changes or moved on to other games. I don't understand why you are here complaining about this.
More to the point. If you consider EQ2 a failure then every mmo out in the last 8-9 years has been a Failure.
Given a look around at the bitterness on mmorpg.com, you could actually make a fairly strong case in support of that.
But only if you accept the usual rabblerabble as evidence of anything, I suppose.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
This is strictly taken from release day and a month in.
1. Zone monster from hell. The amount of times you had to zone in this game was insane and the memory leak didn't exactly help that situation either. You had to constantly relog and reform your group.
2. SoE tap dancing around making all equipment BoE to cater to the crafters and then changing it back, repeating this process at least twice
3. System requirements were too high because SoE had the brilliant idea of making it future proof.
4. In an effort to combat kill stealing, SoE thought it would be a good idea to lock combat from outside interference unless you typed /help in which case you forfeited loot and exp (this was later changed after people had or were abandoning ship)
5. WoW being released shortly after with NONE of the issues above
People who bought EQ2 wanted a worthy sequel to EQ. Too many things had changed and not for the better. Crafting was the only exception where EQ2 actually improved on the original EQ. Those were the downfall of EQ2 from my point of view and many others I played it with
Loved EQ2 at release and up until about Echos of Faydwer. It's pretty depressing to think about what they've turned the game into.
Hopefully EQ Next won't end up the same way.
The best prediction of future behaviour is past behaviour.
Played quite a number of SOE titles in the past, I remain very sceptical and cautious when I read Smedley's articles about EQNext and their visions, but one can only hope that they have learned from past debacles.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
I agree that the start of EQ2 was very addicting and immersive. Much more so to me than WoW was.
Heck, I even let a friend play through the starting isle at my home and though he'd sworn never to get a subscription game he went to the store and bought EQ2 after that.
But the game was also a representation of much older and more grindy games whereas WoW was already offering an alternative to that at the time. I really liked exploring the world in EQ2, but fact was that I only got to leveling once I had a group and we started grinding Gnolls / Giants / Giant rats of some sort / Orcs / ...
The later zones were also very bland as you say and even though it was more like the older MMO's, it totally lacked things like PvP (and after they started putting it in, the PvE balance was bound to screw it up imo) and it was actually very instanced in some areas.
I saw a lot of people leave for WoW (2 guilds I was in disappeared gradually as players went to WoW) and it created a lot of resentment amongst those who remained, which didn't much improve the community imo.
Personally I played both games alongside eachother for a time, but when I had gone through Elwynn forest and Westfall in WoW and had done my first Deadmines run, I realised: "This is something EQ2 doesn't have and never will have."
I left when they released the first expansion with a cap raise to 60 after I had just painstakingly hit level 50 and had just started out doing some endgame. Still bought the expansion, but the cap raise came way too quickly for me and there wasn't all that much to do in the first expansion (through I admittedly never really digged into it).
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
As my guildleader in EQ2 says about complaints as this. "It was so hard so we only had one sword to share in the raid".
I truly hope that all that wants it find this ultrahardcore MMO so they can be happy again, but it would be refreshing if at least there was an acceptance among the "oh its so easy mode" crowd that a product has to sell and be competitive on the market, it is still OK to dislike whatever you dislike. However I expect that a new launch of a old style hardcore game would be a failure as there are not enough hardcore MMO fans out there anymore.
I had played at launch for three months and came back a couple years later enjoying it a great deal more with the changes they had made. I didn't like it at all at release. But after returning, I continued to play for over four years. But the EoF expansion was really the only one I got enjoyment from and I found my interest diminishing with each expansion after...especially when they started the all the daily quests. I felt I was logging in for an overwhelming number of appointments rather than just playing for fun.
And there was something about the colors they used in more recent expansions that would cause eye strain and headaches after awhile. Maybe it's just old age, but boy that red/orange in Skyshrine...I never returned after the first trip.
I got a lot of years of enjoyment out of it, more years than EQ1 even, so it wasn't a failure in my eyes.
played EQ2 at release alongside SWG, loved the game, downside was that I had to wait VERY long for people to do dungeons, up to hours....my guild and other guilds didn't do those, instead they just skipped dungeons and started good old powerfarming to gain XP.
Shame that I got to see only like 5% of the game to the point I canceled.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
Personally I played both games alongside eachother for a time, but when I had gone through Elwynn forest and Westfall in WoW and had done my first Deadmines run, I realised: "This is something EQ2 doesn't have and never will have."
The flip side is, Stormhold or RoV or Runnyeye is something WoW doesnt have and never will. Open world dungeons. And EQ2's instances tend to be more interesting than WoW's. Places like Nektropos arent the straightforward n rails experience that WoW instances are. Unrest has heavy puzzle solving elements. Unrest > any WoW instance by far, but thats personal opinion. It can frustrate those that want a quick fix. EQ2 dungeons and instances arent the instatnt gratification linear affairs that WoW dungeons are.
WoW did play with some non linear dungeons (Uldaman, Mauradon, WC) but quickly scrapped that idea.
Deadmines is a really cool experience though
One thing that EQ2 does right that should be a no brainer in any game but almost no one does it: the Heritage quests. Obviously not all games have heritage items, but the concept of long, rewarding, multistage quests is lost on games like Rift and modern WoW.
Yes, but at least in vanilla WoW (that's what I'm talking about, not the current day stuff), you did have elite areas, in fact I would say that those were very much like the ones in EQ2, except you probably wouldn't be grinding them as much. EQ2 did have far more of an emphasis on them, especially with many bosses also being open world. That was definitely very cool as it gave more of a character to each location. On the other side the real endbosses were camped by guilds.
Heritage quests were also nice, except that they were some of the only quests between all the thousands of other ones that were actually worth doing.
And when the population dropped down deep they weren't doable anymore, many weren't in each case.
I was on Innothule, which got merged after I left I think.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
Comments
It is true that the development team did not want to call it Everquest 2, and the game probably had been more sucessfull if they had called it something else. But nevertheless the old EQ gameplay style is a thing from the past, regardless how fun you thought it was (and I did) when you were younger and had a lot of time and everyone played EQ because there was not anything else, that kind of game is simply not marketable anymore. Had there been a easier and more accessible alternative to EQ in the heyday, EQ would never had become as big as it was.
Instead of attacking a game you obsviously do not play anymore why not talk about the hard core old style game you currently play? It will be interesting to see how EQ next turns out, but that is for 2014 most likely.
Chi puo dir com'egli arde é in picciol fuoco.
He who can describe the flame does not burn.
Petrarch
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.'
-Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid."
-Luke McKinney
EoF EQ2 was a much better game than launch EQ2
I dont agree with a lot fo the changes they made, but then end result was fine.
Its suffered a bit in the Smokejumper era for sure, but its still better than any other themepark.
are you referring to "COE Collectors edition" mercs?
because mercs were never sold seperately
EQ2 fan sites
I don't know about all that but I do think they did a piss poor job of tying EQ2 to Everquest. If you want to appeal to players of Everquest you need to make sure SOME places in the game resemble the Norrath that we'd grown attached to and had fond memories of.
Instead of doing that they rebuilt everything from scratch and none of it even remotely resembled the Norrath we had called home for years.
I really hope the EQ Next team realizes how indelible some of those old towns and landmarks were and do the smart thing by simply upgrading the graphical detail without radically departing from the original designs.
I think EQ2 to this day is a very solid mmo.To me it was just the fact of releasing at the same time (within 2 weeks) of WOW.Once that game started to grow,EQ2 started making changes and was more solo friendly and easier.It ended up being too much like WOW,when it should've went more it's own path.However they probably retained more subs by becoming more like WOW.
If EQ2 would have came out somewhere between Lotro and Rift,thing's may have been much brighter for them.The game to me is still gob's of fun and I love the crafting.Just seem's like there was wasted potential here.
Some day I'm going to put a sword through your eye and out the back of your skull!
Arya Stark
i agree with you that EQ2 felt disconnected from Everquest
there were connections w lore and heritage quests - but EQ2 largely felt like a new mmo world
personally, I didnt mind the new direction but it was a turnoff to some EQ fans
EQ2 fan sites
I didn't mind that the landscape was different. There was a cataclysm and 500 years of recovery after that event. The world was radically damaged, torn apart, and cities were destroyed. There was a lot of lore that explained everything to tie it all together.
What I do dislike are the silly Marketplace items that really have no place in the game whatsoever. I suppose that was my #2 gripe with the SC system. In reality though, it has such a minor impact that its easily ignored.
I really, really hope that EQNext works out. Its too bad we have to wait until later this year for Fan Faire. My biggest concern is that SmokeJumper has had his paws in it from the ground up. I have fundamental issues with him. He's more of a features guy, in a money-grubbing greasy Walmart way. /sigh Only thing to do is wait and see.
I think if you have to say is EverQuest 2 a more complete game now, then that is true as EQ2 was rushed to launch missing most features and was a complete disaster of a launch that like a week later got forgotten about due to WoW being much more complete.
However like SWG, PS and EQ all games SOE driven into the ground like a year or two later, it was the original concept that I buy into. I play a game I originally like and then SOE always has to then completely change it in the wrong direction. EQ2 is not a successful game, it didn't sell very well, it never had many subscribers after the first month and I have my doubts about how many people actually spend money on their F2P model that is so restrictive you'd rather just not play.
I loved the original concept back in beta, it filled me with such hope, it was mind blowning back then just how good EQ2 was graphically. Sadly though they launched with like 20-40 servers and after a month they were dead, I found myself grinding on crabs and stuff by the beach most the time because I couldn't find groups. However in beta when it was just one server and people were excited for the game, you could get groups all the time and it was the most amazing grouping experience I've ever had in an MMO. It's that promise of a beta that puts people in a mind set that they can allow these things that are wrong with the game, however once launched and people don't want to play and quit, suddenly all that promise is gone and it becomes a depressing experience.
The other thing I don't understand is I loved the original art style of the game back in the alpha shots of like 2002 and then at some point it changed and it didn't look nearly as appealing. I still liked the look of it being a more realistic looking fantasy game, it was much more gritty and a darker more frightening place to be than most fantasy games. Weird things like making the character models so ugly, there was a patch before launch in beta that made Human females look like they've been taking drugs, they never fixed that weird drugged up eye look they've had and still have. They put the Asian models in there but they just look ridiculous..... I don't get why they cannot spend the time to redo some of the character models.
That though is SOE all over, they'd rather rush out new poor content than take the time to create something meaningful. They don't seem to get that an MMO is a service, it isn't just a game, the whole game needs upkeep, you cannot just focus on slapping newer stuff over the old.
I don't like how it's a solo game now, all they ever had to do was merge servers but that time is gone now. I don't like how they got rid of the death penalty, that made things scary, it gave the game tension and made your heart pump, that is what makes combat exciting. Now it is a bore where I can solo 10 mobs at once and if I die, whocares? It is no good putting challenging stuff at the end game in the form of Raiding because I'll never get to it as I'm so bored of the game being so easy that I quit way before then.
What makes Dayz? Perma Death. Now I'm not saying every game needs it or needs a harsh death penalty as games like TF2 would suck if you lost all your items every time you died. However certain games bennefit from it and EQ2 was one of them, without it I just find stuff boring. I'm constantly being rewarded and it means nothing as it wasn't hard to achieve. I remember when a chest drop was an amazing time where everyone in your group couldn't wait to see what was dropped. Now for one you#d be on your own but it's like loot drops over and over and over and it becomes boring to the point you ignore it now. They simplified crafting too which is another gripe because it used to be time consuming and rewarding to make stuff, now it's so bloated and worthless because the process is easy. It used to feel like a whole other part of the game you could devote so much time to, it doesn't have that impact any more.
I don't like the new music, it's very generic, the older stuff had such a distinct stuff. It felt dark, eerie but often magical and it reminded me more of like listening to real classical music. I could imagine it being in the Tudor period or something, where as now the music has changed into that boring generic fantasy drone we have in games today.
I don't like how the art style as gone to this very cartoony and more unrealistic fantasy setting that like Warhammer and Warcraft has made popular. I miss that more realistic style that even EverQuest very crudely had as well. The game has lost that dark gritty look it used to have, it's lost the fear of exploring the game world. It is like I loved the feel of Oblivion, I know a lot of people didn't but it felt much more real, I loved the whole cult story and setting. That didn't exist in Skyrim or Morrowind which felt very alien like and that is how EQ2 has gone now.
For me in the beta I was young, I probably had unrealistic dreams of the game staying in beta another year and SOE working with the community to get it to a place they wanted. I had dreams of them removing the doors in the cities (which recently happen but the new look and music sucks) and traveling by real boats through the water ways. I had dreams of not blicking on bells and having boat travel which the beta did have at some parts before it was patched out. I wanted to travel from island to island like WoWs boat ride between the two conts so it felt much more real. Instead SOE went the other direction for the most part and rushed the game to release with not even having mail in it.
Also what happened to all that amazing armour and clothing that was in the alpha? All that seemed to go by the time the beta hit and we had like 2 or 3 sets of armour and I remember that never changing for years.
I so wish someone other than SOE was in charge of this game and could have taken it down the right direction. I'll miss the heavy grouped based MMO it used to be and hate the solo WoW clone it has become.
much of that is customizable in game options
i agree by default, footsteps are too loud but you can soften them or not have them at all
options > sound > advanced > max footstep distance
EQ2 fan sites
I know it is a small thing but it is something that has a large impact.
It's another thing though that makes me wonder how soon after a failed launch do SOE give up on their games? Maybe they don't and they just have idiots in charge of their games, I know they have or had the producer of Planetside in charge of EQ2... I mean wasn't releasing an untested poor expansion 3 months after launch, the bending and BFRs warning enough?
I can only funnel the blame down to Smedley though, he's in charge and even though lots of games have started out being these innovative potential filled titles, they quickly become anything but. The odd thing I find is the community always see it and SOE don't listen, they just go for a market that doesn't exist, rather than the one they're hitting. I mean EVE was never a massive hit, however CCP knew their market and they caused it to grow. To this day they're the only major MMO developer at least that has managed their game properly, they've just stuck to the original idea. They've had failures like Walking in stations, however they've accepted that and focused on what people want. SOE however cannot accept their failures and then try to build upon the failures that no one wanted.
You know what I would have done in SOES shoes?
- Seen BFRs didn't work in tested like EVERYONE SAID ON THE FUCKING FORUMS.
- Luclin and PoP wouldn't have even happened.
- EQ2 would have been given more time, which proper management of older games would have allowed for.
- SWG, pushed it unti November 2003 so major features would have been in like mounts and player cities. Never added Jedi until the game is stable, not caused JTLS to destroy the ground game, no CU, no NGE etc etc.
- PS - no CC and no BFRs
- DCUO - Maybe like launch the game with a working UI and content?
It's so obvious and it isn't like things you wouldn't have know till after release of these things, players always complain about them on forums. Planetside 2 is the latest thing about how base design sucks, it's not balanced what so ever, no meta game, too many servers, the hex system sucks, weapons are so boring etc etc.
Seriously SOE take a page out of CCPs book.
You are living in the past. Why talk about events that happened over 8 years ago? The game has evolved, and the community has grown with the changes or moved on to other games. I don't understand why you are here complaining about this.
Good troll I almost fell out of my chair.....sorry you took so much time to write this troll.
More to the point. If you consider EQ2 a failure then every mmo out in the last 8-9 years has been a Failure.
As many before me stated it's far from it by any means of the word "Failure"
Well pretty much every MMO has been, I don#t see how you could call any of them a success.
God I hate these people who call everything a troll.........
Given a look around at the bitterness on mmorpg.com, you could actually make a fairly strong case in support of that.
But only if you accept the usual rabblerabble as evidence of anything, I suppose.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
This is strictly taken from release day and a month in.
1. Zone monster from hell. The amount of times you had to zone in this game was insane and the memory leak didn't exactly help that situation either. You had to constantly relog and reform your group.
2. SoE tap dancing around making all equipment BoE to cater to the crafters and then changing it back, repeating this process at least twice
3. System requirements were too high because SoE had the brilliant idea of making it future proof.
4. In an effort to combat kill stealing, SoE thought it would be a good idea to lock combat from outside interference unless you typed /help in which case you forfeited loot and exp (this was later changed after people had or were abandoning ship)
5. WoW being released shortly after with NONE of the issues above
People who bought EQ2 wanted a worthy sequel to EQ. Too many things had changed and not for the better. Crafting was the only exception where EQ2 actually improved on the original EQ. Those were the downfall of EQ2 from my point of view and many others I played it with
The best prediction of future behaviour is past behaviour.
Played quite a number of SOE titles in the past, I remain very sceptical and cautious when I read Smedley's articles about EQNext and their visions, but one can only hope that they have learned from past debacles.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
I agree that the start of EQ2 was very addicting and immersive. Much more so to me than WoW was.
Heck, I even let a friend play through the starting isle at my home and though he'd sworn never to get a subscription game he went to the store and bought EQ2 after that.
But the game was also a representation of much older and more grindy games whereas WoW was already offering an alternative to that at the time. I really liked exploring the world in EQ2, but fact was that I only got to leveling once I had a group and we started grinding Gnolls / Giants / Giant rats of some sort / Orcs / ...
The later zones were also very bland as you say and even though it was more like the older MMO's, it totally lacked things like PvP (and after they started putting it in, the PvE balance was bound to screw it up imo) and it was actually very instanced in some areas.
I saw a lot of people leave for WoW (2 guilds I was in disappeared gradually as players went to WoW) and it created a lot of resentment amongst those who remained, which didn't much improve the community imo.
Personally I played both games alongside eachother for a time, but when I had gone through Elwynn forest and Westfall in WoW and had done my first Deadmines run, I realised: "This is something EQ2 doesn't have and never will have."
I left when they released the first expansion with a cap raise to 60 after I had just painstakingly hit level 50 and had just started out doing some endgame. Still bought the expansion, but the cap raise came way too quickly for me and there wasn't all that much to do in the first expansion (through I admittedly never really digged into it).
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
As my guildleader in EQ2 says about complaints as this. "It was so hard so we only had one sword to share in the raid".
I truly hope that all that wants it find this ultrahardcore MMO so they can be happy again, but it would be refreshing if at least there was an acceptance among the "oh its so easy mode" crowd that a product has to sell and be competitive on the market, it is still OK to dislike whatever you dislike. However I expect that a new launch of a old style hardcore game would be a failure as there are not enough hardcore MMO fans out there anymore.
Chi puo dir com'egli arde é in picciol fuoco.
He who can describe the flame does not burn.
Petrarch
I had played at launch for three months and came back a couple years later enjoying it a great deal more with the changes they had made. I didn't like it at all at release. But after returning, I continued to play for over four years. But the EoF expansion was really the only one I got enjoyment from and I found my interest diminishing with each expansion after...especially when they started the all the daily quests. I felt I was logging in for an overwhelming number of appointments rather than just playing for fun.
And there was something about the colors they used in more recent expansions that would cause eye strain and headaches after awhile. Maybe it's just old age, but boy that red/orange in Skyshrine...I never returned after the first trip.
I got a lot of years of enjoyment out of it, more years than EQ1 even, so it wasn't a failure in my eyes.
played EQ2 at release alongside SWG, loved the game, downside was that I had to wait VERY long for people to do dungeons, up to hours....my guild and other guilds didn't do those, instead they just skipped dungeons and started good old powerfarming to gain XP.
Shame that I got to see only like 5% of the game to the point I canceled.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
The flip side is, Stormhold or RoV or Runnyeye is something WoW doesnt have and never will. Open world dungeons. And EQ2's instances tend to be more interesting than WoW's. Places like Nektropos arent the straightforward n rails experience that WoW instances are. Unrest has heavy puzzle solving elements. Unrest > any WoW instance by far, but thats personal opinion. It can frustrate those that want a quick fix. EQ2 dungeons and instances arent the instatnt gratification linear affairs that WoW dungeons are.
WoW did play with some non linear dungeons (Uldaman, Mauradon, WC) but quickly scrapped that idea.
Deadmines is a really cool experience though
One thing that EQ2 does right that should be a no brainer in any game but almost no one does it: the Heritage quests. Obviously not all games have heritage items, but the concept of long, rewarding, multistage quests is lost on games like Rift and modern WoW.
Yes, but at least in vanilla WoW (that's what I'm talking about, not the current day stuff), you did have elite areas, in fact I would say that those were very much like the ones in EQ2, except you probably wouldn't be grinding them as much. EQ2 did have far more of an emphasis on them, especially with many bosses also being open world. That was definitely very cool as it gave more of a character to each location. On the other side the real endbosses were camped by guilds.
Heritage quests were also nice, except that they were some of the only quests between all the thousands of other ones that were actually worth doing.
And when the population dropped down deep they weren't doable anymore, many weren't in each case.
I was on Innothule, which got merged after I left I think.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!