OFFICIAL ** EVERQUEST 2 ** Thread

[Tyson8earzz]

while the zone is loading, you could maybe surf on another comp or pick your nose or something lol All kidding aside, i guess IF i were to play eq2, i wouldnt be bothered by that seeing i still play eq1 and deal with the loading screen everyday.. minor issue to many i would imagine.

 

[Hadsus]

Originally posted by: Tyson8earzz
while the zone is loading, you could maybe surf on another comp or pick your nose or something lol All kidding aside, i guess IF i were to play eq2, i wouldnt be bothered by that seeing i still play eq1 and deal with the loading screen everyday.. minor issue to me.

.......not to mention that no other MMORPG has the graphic detail, animations, poly count, etc. that EQ 2 has. WoW is nowhere near EQ 2 in the graphics department. For those who don't have the rig to play EQ 2 or who are on dial-up, you've got WoW and other older MMORPGs to play that has no zone loading. But when you got a world as detailed as EQ 2, it's not rocket science to understand why you have to pause now and again to load up new zones.

 

[ArmchairAthlete]

Originally posted by: ProppaT

Originally posted by: ArmchairAthlete
Do you like tons of long loading screens, awful performance, bland graphics, boring races/quests, a company that mistreats its customers, and loads of bugs?

If so, EQ2 is for you! If not, try World of Warcraft.

If you have a crappy, unoptimised computer, you get long loading screens and aweful performance. I play just fine at 1024x768 on my laptop with an FX5200. If my laptop w/ crappy video and a 4200rpm hard drive can play it, so can your computer...

Bland Graphics? Maybe if you're running it on an FX5200 like my laptop. But my main computer has an X800 Pro in it...and boy, is the game total eye candy. WoW has bright colors, but that's because it's like watching a cartoon. It doesn't take much processing power to make something that looks like a cartoon like decent. EQII, at 1600x1200 w/ most of the options on, will make your JAW DROP! Pictures do not do it justice...

Boring races? Not really when you compare it to WoW, IMO. What about the lack of classes to choose from in Wow? There's many more options in EQ. I Beta'd WoW and EQII and I have to say that WoW bored me to tears. Every corner I turned in EQII I was finding something new and finding another peice of an extremely large story/history that was unfolding around me. Everything in EQII just seems like it's on such a large scale...it's almost overwhelming. WoW just seemed like a hack and slash tredmill.

Company that mistreats its customers, you've got me there. SOE/Verant is a crappy company but, when you play the game you can tell that they tried their best to make a quality product. Blizzard is a great company, but their quality is starting to slip. The last really good game they put out was Diablo II. The Warcraft series has always been half assed to me.

Really though, it all comes down to what you like. EQII appeals to me because of the combination of realism and familiar fanatasy aspects. WoW appeals to others who're looking for a more lighthearted MMO.

My only gripe about EQII: Only 4 characters per account. That's crap, especially when they raised the price to $14.95 a month...

I have a 9700 Pro/2500+ with up-to-date drivers. No spyware/virii. Adjusting graphics settings did not help. The framerate could be OK when holding still, but when moving around (particularly in the city) it would choke, I thought maybe it was related to loading or possibly that I have 512MB Ram which had always been fine in the past.

See above. / Gets into personal taste though.

Quality > Quantity

EDIT: World of Warcraft = 50 characters per account with no extra charge.

 

[Hadsus]

Originally posted by: ArmchairAthlete

The framerate could be OK when holding still, but when moving around (particularly in the city) it would choke, I thought maybe it was related to loading or possibly that I have 512MB Ram which had always been fine in the past.

512 MB of Ram would be your bottleneck. 1 GB is recommended and 512 is minimum. My machine is 3 Ghz, 1 gig ram, and a Radeon 9800 PRO. I can run it pretty well but am not anywhere near maxed out on the graphics settings. SOE is definitely gonna lose some business due to the graphics rendering requirements.

 

[Tyson8earzz]

i forsee SOE gaining business in the upcoming months when more and more ppl have then upgraded to the next video card anyway. Remember, eq1 is pushing 6 yrs old in 2005...

EQ2 will prolly still be played in 2010 prolly? I mean, in 2010, what kind of vid cards will there be then? prolly ones with 1024mb ram or better lol And SOE wont have such "steep" hardware requirements then, as we all have upgraded our own hardware faster then they will update thier graphics in the years to come

 

[imported_obsidian]

Originally posted by: ArmchairAthlete
Do you like tons of long loading screens, awful performance, bland graphics, boring races/quests, a company that mistreats its customers, and loads of bugs?

If so, EQ2 is for you! If not, try World of Warcraft.

Long? Loading takes me about 5-15 seconds depending on zone. And its not like that happens often.

Performance is great on my computer at balanced settings with some tweaks to shadows. BTW, WoW doesn't even have shadows.

Bland? They are miles ahead of WoW.

I play WoW. Every quest, and I do mean absolutely every quest that I have done to level 10 has been to collect something or kill something (or both).

Bugs? I haven't found any game breaking for me so far. However, I hear crafting needs some tweaking.

This type of hostile nonsense you say is just dumb. Both are good games, both with have a big playerbase.

 

[ArmchairAthlete]

Originally posted by: obsidian

Originally posted by: ArmchairAthlete
Do you like tons of long loading screens, awful performance, bland graphics, boring races/quests, a company that mistreats its customers, and loads of bugs?

If so, EQ2 is for you! If not, try World of Warcraft.

Long? Loading takes me about 5-15 seconds depending on zone. And its not like that happens often.

Performance is great on my computer at balanced settings with some tweaks to shadows. BTW, WoW doesn't even have shadows.

Bland? They are miles ahead of WoW.

I play WoW. Every quest, and I do mean absolutely every quest that I have done to level 10 has been to collect something or kill something (or both).

Bugs? I haven't found any game breaking for me so far. However, I hear crafting needs some tweaking.

This type of hostile nonsense you say is just dumb. Both are good games, both with have a big playerbase.

Loading screens could last up to 2+ minutes for me in EQ2. That's with an overclocked 2500+ and a 7200RPM/8Mb cache HDD.

I'm not sure how you got to lvl 10 without getting a quest that wasn't one of those two formats, but the quests I did in early EQ2 were pretty lame.

As for hostile nonsense... the OP said he was "contimplating on buying it, and would be greatful to hear what others think of the game. ", so I told him what I thought of it. I've got a friend who also tried the beta, and I'm sure he would have similar things to say if he posted here.

512 MB of Ram would be your bottleneck. 1 GB is recommended and 512 is minimum. My machine is 3 Ghz, 1 gig ram, and a Radeon 9800 PRO. I can run it pretty well but am not anywhere near maxed out on the graphics settings. SOE is definitely gonna lose some business due to the graphics rendering requirements.

I was kinda thinking that was it. Every other game I've played including WoW has been perfectly fine with 512MB, and I don't really want to buy another stick of RAM just to play a new game at this point.

 

[ProppaT]

If you're having long loading time issues in EQII...

1) You don't have enough RAM
-or-
2) You're experiencing the memory leak bug that a lot of people are finding with certain configurations.

The quick fix...
Install a 2nd crappy hard drive in your computer on your 2nd IDE channel, format the hard drive, and move a fixed Windows swap file to that drive. I have mine set to 2gb. This give's EQ more than enough space to play with. Even if you're experiencing the memory leak, this should help substantially. The only time I get bogged down is when I'm zonning around Qeynos. EQ doesn't flush the textures from memory correctly. Once this is fixed I think everyone will be up and running fine.

And, once again for the record, I can play this game NO PROBLEM on my laptop w/ 512mb RAM, a 64mb FX5200, and a 4200RPM hard drive. Most problems can be avoided by a clean Windows install and basic windows tweaks.

 

[Velk]

Originally posted by: obsidian
I play WoW. Every quest, and I do mean absolutely every quest that I have done to level 10 has been to collect something or kill something (or both).

Wake up sleeping peons by slapping them with the overseer stick ?

Steal pumpkins from a farm and turn them poison them and give them to prisoners to mutate them into ghouls ?

Both of those are level 4 ish quests that are pretty hard to miss for any class.

I am interested though - what kind of newbie quests does EQ2 give that are not boiled down to a 'hail w, kill x, take package to y, pick up z from somewhere' ? I assume there are some from the way that you brought that up..

Boring quests that are all the same is an accusation that gets flung around a lot by people for many games, but I never see a lot of information on people would prefer instead.

 

[GopGuyCA]

MMORPGs are the only game I can play.

Ever since my first, UO, I haven't been able to play non-online games. And even games that have online play but that are not continous as are MMORPGs... I have a hard time putting time into them.

I got EQ2 when it launched but can't play it because my computer doesn't support it. I can't play until this Friday when my new PC from Dell comes in the mail.

 

[Malladine]

Haven't played EQ2 but am still interested in it. I've read various reviews, most seem favorable...

THing is, i'm enjoying WoW a lot right now and it's going to release sooner than i'm willing to buy a SoE/Verant product (1 month at least after release). So i'm annoyingly torn.

I think the wipe could decide it. If they get rid of my open beta char (and my wife's) we might turn to EQ2 more.

 

[Gurck]

Originally posted by: ArmchairAthlete
I was kinda thinking that was it. Every other game I've played including WoW has been perfectly fine with 512MB, and I don't really want to buy another stick of RAM just to play a new game at this point.

Though I feel sorry for people being smacked around by Sony's contempt of customers, I'll admit that a GB of ram isn't an outrageous amount to need; current games utilize that much, for the most part - EQ2 isn't the only one (though it is an inefficient & buggy resource hog). Far Cry, for instance, benefits greatly from a GB vs. 512mb. The 512mb era is over; you need a GB now. Honestly, even regular WinXP usage benefits from it, as I found out when I recently downgraded to 512mb for a week.

 

[Malladine]

Originally posted by: Gurck

Originally posted by: ArmchairAthlete
I was kinda thinking that was it. Every other game I've played including WoW has been perfectly fine with 512MB, and I don't really want to buy another stick of RAM just to play a new game at this point.

Though I feel sorry for people being smacked around by Sony's contempt of customers, I'll admit that a GB of ram isn't an outrageous amount to need; current games utilize that much, for the most part - EQ2 isn't the only one (though it is an inefficient & buggy resource hog). Far Cry, for instance, benefits greatly from a GB vs. 512mb. The 512mb era is over; you need a GB now. Honestly, even regular WinXP usage benefits from it, as I found out when I recently downgraded to 512mb for a week.

yah, 1gb is standard for games these days certainly. I would never recommend a modern gaming pc with less than that if at all avoidable.

 

[imported_obsidian]

Originally posted by: Velk
I am interested though - what kind of newbie quests does EQ2 give that are not boiled down to a 'hail w, kill x, take package to y, pick up z from somewhere' ? I assume there are some from the way that you brought that up..

Boring quests that are all the same is an accusation that gets flung around a lot by people for many games, but I never see a lot of information on people would prefer instead.

I'm not saying anything is wrong with that system. I am saying there is nothing substantially different between WoW and EQ2 quests. What irritates me is people praising one game like it has no flaws and then saying some other game is the bane of existance. WoW does have flaws. Just like EQ2 does. But making ridiculous, untrue accusations helps no one make an informed decision.

Oh, and if loading takes two minutes for you, then something is wrong with your computer. It usually takes me 10-20 seconds.

 

[Bateluer]

If anyone wants someone to group with, drop me a tell in game. I'm on the Lucan Dlere RP server, under the name 'Enrin' Currently a lvl 9 Half-Elf fighter working on finishing the fighter class quests.

On a side note, talking to a few full blooded elves yielded a racial insult. "From the look in your eyes, you had potential, but one of your parents made a poor choice in love."

 

[codeyf]

I played both, and have not looked back to WoW.

Everyone is talking about boring noob quests. Well, going through 10 levels in each game (now 12 in EQ2), guess what. They were all Kill X mobs, take this to X, etc etc etc. They're all boring. Cuz they're noob quests.

Combat is much more interesting in EQ2. The Heroic Opportunites make it much more fun, and encourage greater team work.

The difference in graphics is HUGE. Look at WoW at max settings, then look at EQ2 at max. No comparison. My rig is a A64 3200+, 9800 Pro, 1gb ram, and SATA HD w/8mb cache. I run @ 1600x1200, medium settings and all is smooth.

Loading is a non-issue. Times vary by machine, but the zones are so huge, you spend A LOT of time in a zone.

I've had maybe 3-4 crashes in the past week, 1 of which was a server crash, another was it going down for patching.

Bottom line, the noob game is the same for both. Simple quests, designed to let you get the "feel" of things. Graphics go to EQ2. Gameplay is opinion, and I enjoy the gameplay in EQ2 more.

Alot of people's gripes are hardware related. Yet are people gonna say HL2 sucks simply cuz it lags on their machine?

 

[CVSiN]

Originally posted by: sjetexas
Been playing for a few days. What strikes me as odd is the players seem somewhat antisocial. Not much chatting and grouping going on....at least compared to what I've seen in WoW and past mmorpgs. Could be cause I am still level 7, but I sometimes don't even feel like the game is online. I'm sure it'll change soon.

Ive noticed same thing..
game is very antisocial and cold...
im L15 and im done.. wont be playing anymore..
tired of yelling.. level 15 rogue LFG......

 

[HeroOfPellinor]

Originally posted by: CVSiN
tired of yelling.. level 15 rogue LFG......

Hehe....reminds me of that parody post I did of EQ criticizing it for catering to the worst segment in gaming...the hardcore player. Just saying I told you so.

The reason you can't find a group is because the only freaking people who play EQ and, therefore, EQII, are people without jobs or families who belong to guilds of similar players and they're all too busy powerleveling each other to bother with someone who can't play from 4:00 PM till 2:00 AM every day to contribute to the guild or make a name for themself.

 

[Malladine]

Originally posted by: HeroOfPellinor

Originally posted by: CVSiN
tired of yelling.. level 15 rogue LFG......

Hehe....reminds me of that parody post I did of EQ criticizing it for catering to the worst segment in gaming...the hardcore player. Just saying I told you so.

The reason you can't find a group is because the only freaking people who play EQ and, therefore, EQII, are people without jobs or families who belong to guilds of similar players and they're all too busy powerleveling each other to bother with someone who can't play from 4:00 PM till 2:00 AM every day to contribute to the guild or make a name for themself.

hm

 

[imported_obsidian]

Originally posted by: HeroOfPellinor

Originally posted by: CVSiN
tired of yelling.. level 15 rogue LFG......

Hehe....reminds me of that parody post I did of EQ criticizing it for catering to the worst segment in gaming...the hardcore player. Just saying I told you so.

The reason you can't find a group is because the only freaking people who play EQ and, therefore, EQII, are people without jobs or families who belong to guilds of similar players and they're all too busy powerleveling each other to bother with someone who can't play from 4:00 PM till 2:00 AM every day to contribute to the guild or make a name for themself.

Yea, and all the people who play WoW are little 12 year old diablo 2 kiddies. Grow up man and learn a thing or two before critizing a game and all people who play it.

 

[Gurck]

Originally posted by: HeroOfPellinor

Originally posted by: CVSiN
tired of yelling.. level 15 rogue LFG......

Hehe....reminds me of that parody post I did of EQ criticizing it for catering to the worst segment in gaming...the hardcore player. Just saying I told you so.

The reason you can't find a group is because the only freaking people who play EQ and, therefore, EQII, are people without jobs or families who belong to guilds of similar players and they're all too busy powerleveling each other to bother with someone who can't play from 4:00 PM till 2:00 AM every day to contribute to the guild or make a name for themself.

The hardcore player is generally very knowledgeable and sociable. The content they access requires social skills; ie. joining & participating in a guild, at the least, as few things in end-game are doable without a raid, much less without a group. If EQ is "cold" it's because, sorry if I'm offending anyone, it takes a rather dull person to not just put up with the way Sony treats their customers, but to pay for the privelage. The changes they've made to customer service and game quality in the past few years have attracted a playerbase much lower in average age and IQ and, therefore, social skills.

 

[HeroOfPellinor]

Originally posted by: GopGuyCA
MMORPGs are the only game I can play.

Ever since my first, UO, I haven't been able to play non-online games. And even games that have online play but that are not continous as are MMORPGs... I have a hard time putting time into them.

I got EQ2 when it launched but can't play it because my computer doesn't support it. I can't play until this Friday when my new PC from Dell comes in the mail.

I was the same way. UO freaking rocked my world when I started playing it in '97.

I too couldn't play any non MMO game.....I guess because they suddenly felt very contrived....almost like watching a movie since every other person who played that game went through it the same exact way. After years of UO I moved on to every other MMO released (except AC) and I began to notice a trend AWAY from the open ended variety gameplay of UO towards instanced zones for guilds and zero emphasis on crafting and community building. Remember player-run taverns and cities in UO? Can you imagine anybody taking more than a half second break from leveling in Wow,EQ, EQII, DAOC, or AO to waste on a frivolous undertaking like that? No way. No freaking way in hell.

So I'm back on single player games and online games like C-S and BF1942 and maybe Guild Wars for my multiplayer fix.

In UO, the interaction between thousands of players CREATED myriad stories each day. In every game since, you've followed scripted quests (like you would in a SRPG) or kill untold kobold-Xs while saying no more than "Heal!" or "Mez!" during a four hour gaming session.

Some day some developer will understand what it was about UO that triggered a new genre. Because no publisher will fund a game that doesn't adhere to the sure-fire money-maker EQ clone architecture, it'll be a rogue or independent developer and it will spark the renaissance of MMORPGs. Hell, I've got a plethora of ideas that would make the ultimate MMO and a lot of other guys do too, but we're not accountants so we won't be making any of the design decisions any time soon. :roll:

 

[CVSiN]

Originally posted by: HeroOfPellinor

Originally posted by: CVSiN
tired of yelling.. level 15 rogue LFG......

Hehe....reminds me of that parody post I did of EQ criticizing it for catering to the worst segment in gaming...the hardcore player. Just saying I told you so.

The reason you can't find a group is because the only freaking people who play EQ and, therefore, EQII, are people without jobs or families who belong to guilds of similar players and they're all too busy powerleveling each other to bother with someone who can't play from 4:00 PM till 2:00 AM every day to contribute to the guild or make a name for themself.

Actually I am a hardcore player alot of time do i burn on these games....
my guild and my EQ uber guild from Fen ro none that I know of are playing EQ2.. all are in WoW..
i got 3 friends from my guild here and they are all thinking to much like WoW they want to just solo on greens all day.. farming greens is freaking boring... sorry i want a challenging group..

when I was level 10 in EQ1 i was a barb warrior we made the journey across the world at level 10 to Crushbone to hunt..
never have I felt that kinda awe and danger of trying to get through Runneyeye and the gorge and the karanas as an lowly L10 with no SOW or invis... talk about an insane adventure...
in this game there are NO other cities to travel to.. there is NOTHING but your home town of freeport or quenos.. there is no uber fun newbie dungeons like blackburrow or Crushbone or any of the other stepping stone dungeons for each region that made EQ1 so awesome..

they couldnt have screwed the pooch more on the world itelf..
to me its not EQ at all..
the world they have created is not the fun neat wonderful place that EQ1 was...
its a boring confined game.. im so sick of FP and quenos i wanna puke every time I go there...
all they did is make the world feel small and restrictive...
at least in wow as a newb i can still travel to others home cities and do thier quests.. instead of being trapped in 1 of 2 towns...

 

[HeroOfPellinor]

Originally posted by: CVSiN
when I was level 10 in EQ1 i was a barb warrior we made the journey across the world at level 10 to Crushbone to hunt..
never have I felt that kinda awe and danger of trying to get through Runneyeye and the gorge and the karanas as an lowly L10 with no SOW or invis... talk about an insane adventure...
in this game there are NO other cities to travel to.. there is NOTHING but your home town of freeport or quenos.. there is no uber fun newbie dungeons like blackburrow or Crushbone or any of the other stepping stone dungeons for each region that made EQ1 so awesome.

LOL! Actually, that was the best experience I had in EQ too. When I first started playing I started characters all over and tried them out and futsed with names and whatnot. I decided I liked the Dwarves but wanted to start in Qeynos since I knew the area better for leveling 1-10. So, at level 2, I ran my dwarf solo from Kalamazoo or whatever that city was all the way to Qeynos. I actually died the first two times I tried (once to a lion and once off a cliff), but it was a blast shouting to everyone in the zones asking for directions. That boat ride was probably the best part. Those tedious mundane exercises like that really give the world a "life like" quality. I'm sure almost everyone else just gets teleports, but the more things like boat rides, for me, the better. It's too bad levelling got really steep really fast and grouping was a bizatch.

Anyway, I thought that was funny.

 

[CVSiN]

Originally posted by: HeroOfPellinor

Originally posted by: CVSiN
when I was level 10 in EQ1 i was a barb warrior we made the journey across the world at level 10 to Crushbone to hunt..
never have I felt that kinda awe and danger of trying to get through Runneyeye and the gorge and the karanas as an lowly L10 with no SOW or invis... talk about an insane adventure...
in this game there are NO other cities to travel to.. there is NOTHING but your home town of freeport or quenos.. there is no uber fun newbie dungeons like blackburrow or Crushbone or any of the other stepping stone dungeons for each region that made EQ1 so awesome.

LOL! Actually, that was the best experience I had in EQ too. When I first started playing I started characters all over and tried them out and futsed with names and whatnot. I decided I liked the Dwarves but wanted to start in Qeynos since I knew the area better for leveling 1-10. So, at level 2, I ran my dwarf solo from Kalamazoo or whatever that city was all the way to Qeynos. I actually died the first two times I tried (once to a lion and once off a cliff), but it was a blast shouting to everyone in the zones asking for directions. That boat ride was probably the best part. Those tedious mundane exercises like that really give the world a "life like" quality. I'm sure almost everyone else just gets teleports, but the more things like boat rides, for me, the better. It's too bad levelling got really steep really fast and grouping was a bizatch.

Anyway, I thought that was funny.

LOL you as a dorf were in the best levling area in EQ1 period =P
Greater Fay ruled from 1-15 flat out... well ok MAYBE the halfling area was a little better)
then to outside runneyeye to 20... then into the Karanas then to the birds and so on =)