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EQ2: great game, boring world
Elikal
Member UncommonPosts: 7,912
After I quit EQ2 a short time ago, it's a desire to write some small echo. While EQ2 surely has the best graphics, and a very good combat system, I never got rid of the feeling that EQ2 is quite a dead world. I dunno, I played WOW and SWG a long time, and it never felt dead like EQ2. I had those pubs/cantinas full with players roleplaying, the buzzing life in some cities and all. In EQ2 poeple come to Qeynos or Freeport to buy/sell and then rush out.
I really loathe the fact that its all zones with teleport! The feeling of the vast WOW realms which you can just travel, with the many small villages and the big cities makes WOW feel so alive, and the same counted for SWG for a very long time. (Servers are filling now again I think.) But in EQ2... you buy/sell and run to the next quest.
Another thing is: I played MANY MMOs, but I have never seen so uber complicated quests. All quests above level 40 or so contain dozens of very special and particular steps. The result is, while I can log into WOW or SWG or CoH any time and get a group for some of my quests, questing in EQ2 was WORK, needing weeks or even months of planning, dating and finding people to go through all the stages. My ideal Online Gaming should be like one of those old D&D meetings: you meet and run into an adventure. Plain and simple. While the devs of EQ2 really tried to make a good game, the questing got overly complicated with the last two addons, especially the last was my reason to quit, when my guild was staring to make monthly shedules to make our quests. 
I know, its more a feeling than a logical observation, but for said reasons I never felt EQ2 was a living, breathing world.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Comments
Almost every game has a place where players just meet and talk.
EQ2 doesn't have that. The only 'community' is on the message boards, and those are empty half the time.
Well probably this is just on the RP servers and not elsewhere, but I've found a ton of tavern events on Antonia Bayle, in Freeport people have designated a particular tavern for RP and I see people in there all the time, talking and roleplaying. A lot of the community is you get out what you put in. I'm not defending the game totally of course, I have felt that some parts of the game are rather bland, I think it's a big mistake to make three out of the first four starting zones (Antonica, Commonlands, Thundering Steppes) just basically big boring plains with a few mountains and whatever. I'm in my 40s now and I'm finally hitting cool jungles and icy plains, the melting heat of Lavastorm, and thinking, wow, these are the cool zones I've been missing! I loved the variety of zones in the original EQ (and also WoW has a lot) so that's definitely the thing I'd like more. That said, I'm still having fun, there's a ton of RP going on, and the game seems to be getting more interesting.
Also, I like the complicated quests, I think that's what separates the Everquest series from other games, I get tired of quests that are too short and aren't interesting.
I agree too.
Towns should be places to meet and talk, with EQ2 it's over the chat : People never meet and talk, just run past eachother.
Plus the world is all zoned and doesn't really have a nice feel to it
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Don't click here...no2
Very intelligent post and I totally agree. The game definately lacks the social side of things that are so common in SWG/EQ1 and many other MMORPGs.
I hope this will change with the implementation of some sort of Guild Hall and/or Bazaar type of idea. All the game needs in this aspect is a common meeting ground where people can spam, set up their own broker/vendors or just plain sit and talk or meet with guild members.
Its like 10 loading zones in 1 city, thats to much :P
Starwars Galaxies, An Empier Diveded, That's what it says on my box anyway.
"While EQ2 surely has the best graphics, "
I completely disagree with this. EQ2 is the only gmae I've ever played that looks worse when you enable all the whiz bang features. C'mon, do you really like that cray 100% reflective white armour? It looks like it's been wrapped in tin foil. Not only are the graphics bad, but the entire game reeks of a lack of knowldge or care when it came to puttin it together. There are way too many polygons in the charactersand buildings and the animation is just crap. I think thei si the only game I've seemn where a character will continue a drinking motion when he has turned his head, so now he's poring his drin in his ear. Just plain sloppy. How about when they gave everyone that annoying flu and the characters all used the same animation , so when someone would hug them selves they would push their happer through their face, or the females would pushe their arms through their breasts. They should be ashamed of themselves for the level of crap left in theis game.
Oh, and to hear them complain about how difficult it would be to create new armor for the characters just shows how poorly it was designed. creating new armour for the characters should be brain dead easy. I know, because I do 3d graphics for a living and this stuff is pretty easy to do when you have it planned out from the begining.
Starwars Galaxies, An Empier Diveded, That's what it says on my box anyway.
I just returned to the game after quitting about 6 months after release. I really enjoy the game, but I'm so tired of soloing everything. I can leave my LFG flag up ALL day long, and not get one invite to a group. It's frustrating.
What I wish they would do, is add in a LFG/LFM system like DDO has. DDO had alot of faults, but I love their grouping system in that game.
I agree EQ2 lacks a gathering spot like SWG or WoW.Now question is you ever played a raid you will have to tune your graphics down no matter what your system might be.So imagine a huge gathering place like ogrimaar in WoW ,we have people crashing left and right.
It be so bad people will moan and rush in and out and dread coming near it.the graphics of this game alone dictates that having 100+ in close range is a big no no.Those on lower end system will lag out on lowest setting.Those who spent loads of $$$ for good setting will be forced to adjust setting just entering the area.
I stand corrected. You indeed cannot :P
I had a similar experience with EQ II. I suppose i must have choesn the crappy server, becuase the lowbie areas were just a ghost town. After the newbie island, I would almost never see anyone. And just as the OP described, even if i did see somone they were usually running past me in the city. The economy on my server also bit, at least for lowbie gear. You pretty much had to craft everything yourself if you wanted decent gear.
As far as graphics, I liked some things. The spell effects were generally good, the design of some of the races was nice (ratonga and erudites were quite cool), and I liked all the inane attention to detail in certain aspects of the design. Go around looking at plates and goblets in different areas for example. Overall, however, the game had a pretty bland look.
One area where the game really fell on it's face, imo, was the graphics engine itself. There should be an international law passed that says SOE can no longer develop their own graphics engines. The half life II engine looks and runs better on nearly any PC than the absolutley horrid engine that is used for EQ II and SWG. Ultima IX proved that coding an engine for "PCs of the future" does not work. I guess somone at SOE didn't get the memo.
I don't want to write this, and you don't want to read it. But now it's too late for both of us.
Last I checked they merged a lot of servers, but I have yet to check it out since I havnt bought any of the expansions and kinda dont want to spend all the money on them.
As for how empty the game is, well on splitpaw I have not really had trouble finding groups since I started in Feb. The problem is not often finding a group but finding a group that is not full of muppets :-) but thats a common cross game problem.
Krankel - 58 Defiler
I agree with most that's been said. When I was playing EQ2 I really loved it. But I couldn't get over how dead Freeport and the Commonlands were. I was really dissapointed by this.
The devs need to add something into the cities to make them worth visiting. Like making the Pubs and bars worth stopping at. Or as soemone said earlier, reducing the number of NPC vendors.
This game really needs more players. Hopefully EoF will accomplish that. But at the same time EoF will make the world bigger and therefore cause the playerbase to thin out even more.
A bigger playerbase alone would make this game more enjoyable. I'm not really interested in joining a guild. But I still want to be able to group.
Which FF Character Are You?
I think for the most part people stay away from the cities is because its a memory hog magnet.
Think about it. If you want to hit a tavern and party a little, you have to zone about 4 or 5 times (that's just inside the city) or make the decision to take a shortcut in the sewers to avoid the constant zoning times.
Then when you get in the area you wish to be, you realize that Qeynos Harbor is like a fly in tar when it comes to memory resources and lag.
After about an hour of fraternizing, you have to reboot your computer so that you can go out and adventure with decent FPS because EQ2 has an admitted permanent memory loss that can only be corrected by a system reboot.
That's why no one's in the city. I loathe when I have to go back to visit the broker or to craft. I hate it with a passion. There are times when I go weeks without ever setting foot near any city.
Most of us just really hate the lag that incorporates the city. It's not a computer issue (my computer is very uptodate) rather it's a shoddy coding issue.
That's my two cents anyways
People who have to create conspiracy and hate threads to further a cause lacks in intellectual comprehension of diversity.
This feel of emptiness is the problem I had and do have with Everquest 2. In fact this was the major problem I had with Asheron's Call 2. While EQ2 is clearly fairing better they both end up as bland worlds that try to be lively but tend to fail because there is a problem with how the community is setup. It isn't even the fault of the players I feel but more due to the actual design of the game and EQ1 now suffers greatly of this. EQ1 and EQ2 both spread out players far to much. They keep making these worlds bigger and while that is great, especailly if you have the population it's a double edge sword in that you keep players further and further away from each other and supposed gathering areas.
I know they get compared to much but look at World of Warcraft's Stormwind and and Qeynos. Graphics aside, Stormwind is clearly more alive due the players in the city (reasons why they come back to it are various, even if they are just passing through), and the npcs walking through the city. It's the only game where there are actually children running the streets alone or with parents. Where npcs have patterns they go through (shop, visit other npcs, etc). If feels like a real city and for all the time and design that went into Freeport and Qeynos they don't even have that.
The capital cities in Dark Age of Camelot from what I remember were always packed with peopel because there were only things you could get from there and it was a hub of transportation between certain areas, which is what World of Warcraft cities are. Same for Anarchy Online cities from what I remember and even Final Fantasy XI for it's horrible design has gotten this. Things like this go along way I feel.
True though that the graphics engine and city lag don't help things either.
Personally I feel with instancing one does not need to have an insanely large world and zones don't need to be really big. Unless it's one zone and everything is dropped into it. Sure you can go for that realistic factor but there is a limit I think. For example is there any real reason why both Commonlands and Antonica had to be as big as they are? Same goes for Thundering Steppes and NeK? Don't know about the other areas since I've never been able to push myself that far or gotten groups in timely fashion (was on Crushbone).