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Back when EQ2 had so much potential
Venekor
Member Posts: 62
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voD7rEKGnZU&feature=feedf
Just had such a nice realistic high fantasy art style to it, you know before they ruined it trying to make it all cartoony like WoW. Hate how the game turned out, you used to have to group for everything and now you can just solo right through. Like SOE had this one server technology where it would clone the same zones over and over like beta, yet they then decided to spread the population over 20-40 servers. On top of that they launched the game way too early, we told them in beta and as a result the game died.
I watch this video and it makes me sad because I loved EQ2 back in beta. Now I just see it as dumbed down, underpopulated and the graphics just look too cartoony in all the new zones for my liking. What i notice as well is all the content before launch in SOE games has this high quality to it and anything added afterwards looks and feels rushed. Nothing ever looks as nice as the fthat pre launch content and it always just seems they use the same old models, textures and caves with a few npcs standing in there...
Comments
I think everquest 2 is still the best mmo and best value for money, the amount of content that game has is staggering the devs dont get enough credit, everquest 2 is a very underrated game.
EQ2's only problem is the piece of shit parent company.
Not the developers, art team or even CS.
EQ2 has a lot going for it. It has a lot of content and it's actually fun to play. So no, I don't agree with you.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
It's alright. The big downfall with EQ2 for me anyways is the uninteresting button mashing combat and the way they keep trying to do something awesome like updating the graphics to include shader 3.0 but stopping at 90% complete to make it completely useless and including voice overs for NPCs in beginner original content but not sticking with it. The quests, story and lore are pretty uninspiring too compared to some other MMOs I've played.
EQ2 has A LOT of content but it seems like a hodge podge of a mess at times. Not polished, refined and well thought out. Seems like most of the expansions were just a little bit rushed in the end.
The boring combat thats about having to mash 50 hotbuttons is the major detriment to the game though. 20 hot buttons that require some serious thought and strategy would be much better than the big mess of 5+ hotbars you have to use currently. Not to mention the combat doesn't look very interesting. Crappy animations and spell effects. The combat needs to be the focus of attention, as it's what people do at least 50% of the time. I wish it had the same combat system as Vanguard Saga of Heroes. Now that is not just button mashing. That game takes thought. Even WoW I'd say has better combat than EQ2. Hate to even mention WoW but there are some things about it that are good.
Every MMO is just a button mashing whack-a-mole game. I don't think EQ2's combat is any worse than WoW's or Vanguard. I actually found it more engaging than games like LOTRO and Rift.
The animations are crap because their engine is crap. But I don't see how this would make combat less interesting? Only because it doesn't look cool it's not fun?
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Creative macroing is the best way to handle it, as a necromancer if I don't macro as much as possible I have 8 bars of shit I use constantly, at the moment I've got it condensed down to two bars with one for pets/buffs. There is a bit of a disconnect on actions and animations/particle effects, but once I got used to heavy macro use I was fairly comfortable with the combat feel.
Age of Conan had a nice feel, but pressing four buttons for one action is ridiculous.
WOW's combat feel is pretty solid - animations, button useage and abilities all line up pretty perfectly.
While I enjoy modern EQ2, the game was at its beast at launch and shortly afterwards. I never noticed any bugs or a lot of the issues that supposedly made a lot of players leave, and it was just so awesome contemplating the future of that game. In 2004, pretty much nothing on the market could touch it graphically, and the production values were higher than pretty much any game I've ever played with the possible exception of SW:TOR. Nearly every NPC actuall had quality voice acting as well.
These days, it's really easy to see that EQ2 has a much smaller development team. New areas are nowhere near as detailed, there is little to no voice acting, and all the classic EQ1 areas that we dreamed about exploring when EQ2 launched seem so half arsed in comparison to what they could be.
I've tried EQ2 shortly after launch when they started with the whol free trial thing.
Back then i think it was some where around feb-march 2005 i had a very high end gaming rig(4GB RAM, Radeon X850 XTPE Athlon 64 3500) and i could not run EQ2 on its highest settings at a decent resolution(1680x1050 at the time), not even close - heck during one of the first "scenes" with a ship during a storm the game stuttered like carzy around 5 FPS.
So even tho i had pretty much the best gaming rig possible during that time the game still was a "head of its time" and not in a good way, the same way like when Crysis 1 came out and there was litterly no rig on the planet that could run it at max settings at Full HD, honestly 3-4 years after its launch it still doesnt run smoothly at maxium settings on most gaming rigs at high(well resoultions alltough honestly today no one on earth should be playing anything at lower than 1080p, even my 15.6" laptop has an 1080p display). and 1920*1080/1200 is pretty much standard for any type of a desktop screen made in the past 2-3 years unless you are litterly picked the lowest end screen possible.
Any how back on the subject when i launched EQ2 the only thing i could think of is how "ugly" the game looked compaired to WoW, yes WoW had very simplistic graphics but the art design and the effort that was put into the texturing of all the models just created a very smooth "story book" like exprience. Building a nice engine and having a good "art design" is nice and all but EQ2 never managed to pull them both together yes it looked amazing on high settings(during the 5% of the game where i could actualy run it smoothly) but for every thing else you had to lower the settings to a point where the game just became a jugged mess of pixelated textures, very poor shading, and nice spell effects.
WoW on the other hand started simple(heck they didnt even had dynamic shadows untill the 2nd expansion), but kept a consistant look and feel during its entire life cycle while upgrading the graphics of the game. Some people tried to rip if off EQ tried and failed, WAR tried and failed too, so far SWTOR with their "Stylized Realism" approach is the only thing that is comming close to matching and maybe even beating Blizzards art design and graphics.
IMO the "look and feel" of the game is at the end much more important than its pure graphic prowess because honestly WoW is by far the most artisticaly imerssive MMO i've played and i've played allot of MMO's since/during it including Vangard, Rift, WAR, EQ2, AION, and i dont even remeber what else.
Agreed.
Cartoony as compared to what?The models in all games are very sad quality but no matter they are covered up by gear and this is where EQ2 vaulted above other games.The texture quality and lighting/shaders all add up to nice looking gear.A lo of the surroundings are not that great ,VG improved on that,however their texture use is still zillions of miles above Wow.
Wow's textures are pathetic at best,that is true cartoon looking junk.Detail is anotehr huge factor,a game like FFXI was very low poly,but they put the ffort into a lot of detail that normally you won't see in games.Exampel a pouch flapping up and down on the back of a goblin,a game like Wow just pastes one texture over the entire mob and it looks cheap.
I will agree however,i much liked EQ2 better on release than what it has become.My favourite game FFXI has gone the same route only worse,at least EQ2 there is stil la decent enjoyable ride,in FFXI you level cap in 3-5 days.
Not only has EQ2 goen the Wow route and really chepaened and dumbed down their game,but the actual things that might keep people around,they are trying to charge EXTRA for,VERY sad.
If yo uwant to keep players around,then treat them with respect,fix your bugs BEFORE working on cash shop items and worst of all,GIVE well EARN those items to the players out of respect for supporting your game.To tell players their best content has to be paid for is a serious slap in the face of the customer and you know how that ends up>>>...cya later SOE !.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
He refers to the characters as 'photo realistic'. So try this. Take a photograph of an actual person and compare it to a character in that video. If you can't tell which is real between photo and screenshot, there is something seriously wrong with your perception.
Eh, I had 2 gigs of RAM, a 1.8GHz AMD Processor, and an ATI Radeon 9600 XT, and the game looked darn nice to me. It's all about finding a sweet spot in the configuration options. I had all the textures running at max with that system. Sans shadows, you couldn't even tell it wasn't on max unless you were in an area where there was a lot of water or where there should have been a lot of grass on the ground.
EQ2's biggest problem was all those people that bougth and played World of Warcraft instead of EQ2.
I'm so broke. I can't even pay attention.
"You have the right not to be killed"
I have to respond to the voice acting comment earlier. The game was released with lots of voice acting to help promote it, and when they had the extra money to do so. Now they don't have the money to pay actors for voice acting, so sadly most new content will not have it. I just hope when they revamp freeport that they don't follow that pattern and either keep or add new evil voices....
And to respond about the "dumbing down" of the game... this comment always irks me because when the game was released, level 50 was the max . Now it's level 90 (almost twice as much), so I would really hope it is easier to get to 50 than it was before! Making things faster doesn't necessarily mean the game is easier. DoV was quite a challenge to players when it came out, and they still have weird issues to fix to make its progression faster.
I agree that EQ2 is one of the better pve mmorpgs out there because it has been around a while. It has loads of content and the devs actually listen to the player community.
I dont think the under60 game was dumbed down but players did get more powerful and have more questing choices
- AA was introduced in Kingdom of Sky expansion
making characters more powerful and the content was never rebalanced under 60 for AA
- experience bonuses have been boosted, your vitality bonus gives you larger bonus than it used to
- more under 60 content has been added since launch,
4 more starting zones, EOF expansion added new zones for all levels under 70
both Lavastorm and Everfrost were revamped to be solo questing zones
- lastly, the gear revamp from aug 2011, has made most/all treasured much more powerful than before
EQ2 has not gone the WOW route of eliminating all heroics from outdoor world progression
unlike WOW, plenty of heroics and epics to kill in EQ2 from levels 20+
try finding a heroic quest in wow under 80 -- without going to a dungeon
WOW cata removed heroic quests under 60
WOW latest 4.3 patch, recently changed all heroic quests in BC/LK to be solo player (nonelite)
EQ2 fan sites
[Mod Edit]
All the new UI touches which tell you where every quest giving NPC is to the map showing you where everything is and way points to exactly what you have to do. EQ2 never had the linear quest progression of WoW at launch and look at all the new and remade zones to how WoWlike they're now. Once you got into the Cities you just had random quests dotted about the place that felt very organic and it didn't tell you where they were. Now all them quests were gone until I'm guessing now where I think they've redone the cities? That alone proves the move they're trying to do.
They got rid of all the Unlock quests, all the grouped mobs you cannot tackle without a group and you can solo through the whole game. I'm not quite sure if they have armour quests anymore but that is possible something else they got rid of because you needed a group to do them. Going through Nek on a veteran come back trial, that zone has been dumbed down and made way too easy. I remember it being real dangerous to travel through with loads of mobs walking about, most of them were gone and lots of the quests were gone too.
Everything about the game from soloing through it all to the new UI, quests, consider system, new class system and movement has just obviously been an effort to copy WoW.
EQ2 could have been something different, instead they wanted to make it into a solo WoW clone.
I agree that EQ2 has made the game too solo friendly
but there also things EQ2 has not copied from WOW
- public dungeons (wow never had this)
- outdoor group quests (wow used to have this but removed it)
appearance gear is very popular now, EQ2 was the 1st mmo to offer this
took WOW 3 years to finally add it to their game this month w patch 4.3 (the transmorgifier)
EQ2 fan sites
The ten days before WoW opened, you mean?
Ahm just teasin'
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.
I would add that EQ2 houseing is the best ive experienced. Why other games do not implement that type system I do not understand.
Edit. Oh, and the guild halls are first rate as well.
Really? This game sucks and Im not having fun? Im going to unsub right now. Thanks for the tip.
What I hate is it doesn't take up real world space.
They should have made the world seamless instead of all the loading and zoning you do. It just doesn't feel like a world when you click on a bell and get warped somewhere and the zones are really small and enclosed.
They should have had what Vanguard did with all the boats and have lots of land dedicated for player housing. It just doesn't feel real when you're all clicking on the same door and loading into a building. It would be much nicer to have the player cities and malls of SWG and it all be seamless.
The way you place items was always better than SWG though lol.