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Simple questions
Acaeus
Member Posts: 193
in Everquest II
This is not bashing, not criticizing, just simple honest questions. I'm considering giving EQ2 another shot, but not putting more money into it - just the monthly fee, obviously.
- Is zoning taking the same amount of time as before or SOE has improved the loading times a bit? Or buying more RAM (2gb) is the only option? Any way to improve that through settings?
- Is the original game sufficient? Would I have to buy any expansions to play with most people on the servers?
- how's the PvP server? balanced? Fun? Hardcore?
Comments
1 - I have a problem with loading times, but it's not my RAM or processor. The loading is how fast it can read off your hard drive, and I only have 7200RPM Toshibas right now. If you upgrade to a 10K or 15K RPM hard drive, you'll see much faster loading times.
2- The original game is sufficient, and they even give you two "free" adventure packs when you subscribe.. so extra quests n stuff. The expansions DoF (Desert of Flames) and KoS (Kingdom of Sky) are good to have, but if you're tight on cash, go for only the KoS as it allows you to go up to level 70 and has more valuable content than DoF.
3- I'm not on a PvP server, but I'll take a guess that it's as hardcore as you can get EQ2 to be... you stare at your opponent and click until he dies... or if you can snare, root and cook them until they die and hopefully you'll have enough health and power to endure their attacks when they finally break free. It's probably balanced, though...
1 - I have a problem with loading times, but it's not my RAM or processor. The loading is how fast it can read off your hard drive, and I only have 7200RPM Toshibas right now. If you upgrade to a 10K or 15K RPM hard drive, you'll see much faster loading times.
2- The original game is sufficient, and they even give you two "free" adventure packs when you subscribe.. so extra quests n stuff. The expansions DoF (Desert of Flames) and KoS (Kingdom of Sky) are good to have, but if you're tight on cash, go for only the KoS as it allows you to go up to level 70 and has more valuable content than DoF.
3- I'm not on a PvP server, but I'll take a guess that it's as hardcore as you can get EQ2 to be... you stare at your opponent and click until he dies... or if you can snare, root and cook them until they die and hopefully you'll have enough health and power to endure their attacks when they finally break free. It's probably balanced, though...
Thank you very much for the answers. I'm not really tight on cash. Im not sure I will play for long so I guess I'd feel guilty spending more money on it.
On #1 you are partially right, however. Hard drive speeds matters but the big differece is actually in the amount of RAM. Textures and objects will be stored/cached in memory instead of disk, if memory is available of course.
thanks again.
True about the RAM, but for some reason, EQ2 had to cut back on caching (har har, double meaning) due to limited hard disk space complaints... so you'll find it taking the same time loading each area regardless of how many times you travel through it. My "extreme gaming rig" loads everything very fast (being the best of the best available on the market as of now) when I use my 15kRPM, but when I use the secondary installation on a 7200... it's, ehh.. .no so fast =(.
I'm not too crazy about spending money insanely on things I don't use, so the most expensive thing I have is my vid card (SLi and all that, blah blah brag brag)... whle my very fast hard drive is only around 16 gigs and cost me only $70 =P.
1) Lower graphics setting or more RAM will normally speed up loading, but in general load times are not really a problem once you know your way around. Personally I don’t understand having an issue with zoneing. You only go from one zone to another when traveling, unless you are doing a long complicated quest that sends you to the four corners of Norath you will not be zoneing back and forth very often, you zone once or twice to get where you are going an stay there for the duration. If you are on a quest with a lot of travel you will need to run across large zones so you still will not be doing it very often.
If you get carried away with the early quests you can end up doing a lot of zoning in oyu home city but even that can be minimized if you know your way around.
2) Get the KOS expansion, it’s bundled with the full game if you buy the box in a store, (But not if you go for the digital download). It also gives you access to achievement skills and I think it unlocks levels all the way to 70, even if you don’t have the DOF expansion for levels 50-60.
3) I can only give you second hand info on PvP