f13.net

Any questions you want answered about EQ2, go ahead and ask me. As a member of press, I am allowed to talk about anything that occurred from level 20 and down. That's not to say they are anywhere near finishing the content for level 20 and down - but I won't sugarcoat things in light of that. Lay them on me. I'll try to be as in-depth as possible.

P.S. I thought about going through all the EQ2 threads and post official responses - but SO not worth the time.

Edit: Oh, and the other people in the beta (which would be Joe, Haemish, Alluvian, Signe, and a few others) aren't allowed to answer questions (or so it would seem). So unless they send me a PM, all of your answers come from me. So consider me the source for your [mis]information.

Question one- Where is my beta invite, you bastard??? =P



Question two- Is there anything worth playing for someone who completely burned out on EQ/DAOC/ any game with a long ass treadmill that requires grouping/uberguild membership to see the end game?

I don't know. Those 3 questions marks make me afraid.



Yes. The low level game is fantastically polished. Take that with a grain of salt but newbie island is one of the most fleshed out experiences I've ever had in any game (single or multi). They did a really fucking fantastic job.

Yes, you can level all the way up by just questing. I think my level 14 toon has done over 100 quests. I'm not exaggerating. While there weren't many rewards in place while I was heavily playing, there is just an overwhelming amount of content. And by content I mean full on stories with characters who give out quests for a reason, with fantastic voice acting.

Guilds...I'll talk about them in my writeup. At this point it looks as though an uberguild can fucking dominate due to the nuances of the resource gathering system, but that might change. Hell, it needs to change. Soon.

1. Soloing. Have you soloed, is it possible, is it non-lame? How's the advancement rate for the soloer? I'd ask more in depth about this, but I'm afraid I'd venture too far into NDA waters.

2.  This may be out of bounds, but, how is you computer handling it? Please post some specs for a reference point. (I know this is possible NDA fodder)

3.  Is this a game you can play at the lower levels in one hour chunks?

4.  Are the classes, while still basic, interesting to play until 20 (when you make your final choice)?  Is life as a base class boring?

5.  What's the variety of quests like? Is it typically fedex, gathering, or kill "x of y" type? Are they repeatable?

I wonder if you could talk a bit about solo vs. group play.

Are certain classes better solo? If so which.

Is group experiance way faster then solo or just a bit of an advantage?

Are the tools there for easy pickup groups?

Thanks

Real fast, from everything level 1-20, I can break the NDA all I want.



Right after I stopped playing constantly (I refuse to burn out on betas - decided this...after City of Heroes), they upped the amount of exp for soloers drastically. This is good, and from the sound of one of my friend's experiences, its pretty good. As far as fun goes - I prefer grouping with people I know. But, that's just me. The solo experience is better than most other games I've played.



Up until the last patch, phenomenally. I run a 2.8ghz P4 with a gig of DDR33 and a GeforceFX 5200 Ultra.



Yes.



Life as a base class doesn't last long. They are working on level 10-20 subclasses now. Or...at least I hope they are.



Some are repeatable, some aren't. The amazing thing about the quest system is where you will find them. The first time I was in game, I killed a skeleton, it dropped a treasure map. I went to the location on the map, interacted with the object, and a ghost popped out I had to kill (needs grouping). It's just a very clever system and you'll find quests in the oddest of places (not odd, just unexpected given past MMORPGs). I did 18 quests on Newbie Island, I thought I'd done them all. Apparently there about about 21 quests. It took me 7 hours to complete newbie island the first time. That's level 1-6, not because I couldn't get to level 6, but because I truly wanted to experience everything. This game sucks you in, with an opening like Morrowind. VERY MUCH LIKE MORROWIND.

Every class here has it's advantages. Since there aren't that many classes and they widely vary at the most base of concept, they all interact well in battle. A group of 1 mage, 1 priest, 1 warrior, and 1 scout really can tear some shit up. With a max of 6 people on a group (beside raid groups), you have room to fudge. Maybe 2 priests and 2 warriors. I would always recommend having at least 1 toon from each class in a group.



After the exp bump, it apparently is roughly even in terms of what you'd expect. Of course grouping is faster due to downtime, but not because of exp.



Yes, an LFG tag that is seen from /who and visibly that disappears when you get a group. Note: The amount of smacktards in EQ2 is just as horrible as WoW. It's just not as pervasive because it's easy to get distracted by how beautiful the world is - it truly puts Blizzard to shame. All those worries about the models looking like plastic were unfounded and those who made the assumption will feel like an asshat when the game is run on a decent rig.

Sometimes 8, sometimes 6, sometimes 1. Really depends on the class and situation. I can think of a time in some caves where it was as fast paced as CoH though. I'd say on average between 7 and 9.



Very. And despite what some people have said, the skill gain here is much faster than WoW.



Yes. Also, almost every person in the city has quests - I'm not kidding.

Holy shit. I just hit edit instead of quote next to your post. Sorry about that. Sigh. This is going to be a long day.

Now it looks playing EQ2 allows you to read minds!  Amazing!

Serious question: character power compared to gameworld.  Is your toons effectiveness solely determined by level and gear, or do skill choices make a difference?  Can a single character fight multiple mobs of near equivalent level?  As you increase in level does your effectiveness vs same level mobs go up, down stay the same?  Speaking of gear, what are we talking, camping specific mobs to certain items in a lotto thon, random drops from anything, only drop raw materials: Howz da phat lewt dude?  Hows the downtime?

Basically, how is the gameplay different from EQ1.

Xilren

What's the mention on the beta boards re: any pvp of any function?  Answer as it pertains to L1-20.

Edit to make it relevant.

From the official FAQ: (http://eq2players.station.sony.com/faq.vm)

How has downtime been addressed? I made the mistake of keeping track of up/downtime on my lvl 30 necro, it was 1 minute of uptime for every 4 minutes of downtime.

Is feign death in or what? Necro/sk/monk? I've read that they want to remove feign pulling, but I find FD a required skill in EQ.

You get death penalties if you live but your whole group dies? Wassupwitdat?

That is damn funny Schild.

Another question, are humans bat fucking blind at night still?

Not necessarily a bad thing.  Some classes in EQ end up eating deaths a lot more than others (tanks when the brown stuff hits the rotary unit, shamans on failed slows, etc).  With a 96% res, it's not a huge deal, but it does add up--and with a lower res or no res, it adds up much quicker.

Might as well share the pain.  Just because someone took one for the team doesn't mean they should get stuck with _all_ of it.

Yeah, right. Play with many pickup groups? No thanks, I'll take my feign death for the 'get out of idiocy free', thanks. It's not like mmogs aren't punitive enough about your own actions, without pinning /other/ people's fuckups on you.

When I group at all, it's *always* with a pick-up group. Some of them suck, but most are at least adequate.  

Anyhoo, that's neither here nor there.  Of the three classes I play the most post-60, my cleric only dies on a wipe, and my ranger dies only slightly more often than the cleric ("Ranger Down!" jokes be damned), while the shaman can be expected to die at *least* once a night, no matter how good the group is.  It's just the nature of the class; I usually have to pull a ton of aggro and I pull it early.  

Think of group death penalties as promoting teamwork.  If someone dies, then really the whole team's fucked up somewhere, so why should just one person pay for it?  Share the blame.  (This excludes the possibility that the person is just a complete incompetent or deliberately dying as some sort of suicidal grief measure; in which case the team's potential fuckup is not ditching the loser as quickly as possible to keep it from happening again...)  

Or even if it was nobody's fault and shit just happened, it's not fair that a portion of the community continously suffer the burden of an inflated death count while the others 'get out of jail free.'  Not everyone plays a necro, y'know...

IIRC the downtime is handled by making characters heal a fixed percentage of their HP as they rest, so you heal at the same rate at level 1 as you do at level 50. (As opposed to say FFXI, where to get 10x the HP back you have to rest 9x as long)

I think, again IIRC from a while ago.

Right, which is why it might be out of the game for necros. I expect that kind of move from McQuaid, but I thought the new dev team was less sadistic. I could be wrong.

And technically I consider it a 'get out of your crappy game mechanics free most of the time' card. Wouldn't play EQ without it. I originally played a wizard on release, sold it and started a necro. My two alts were a monk and a SK.

Because there's always a cleric around to give you a 'good' res, right? Why should someone else have to clean up a crappy game mechanic for 'interdependency'. Bah.

Really, let's not walk down this road, it's too easy to slag on EQ for its' crappy game mechanics. Sorry I got started.

Too much shit to respond to. Let's try to keep the chatter in the thread to a minimum. I'm just trying to ANSWER questions with minimal noise. I won't be doing much speculating. One of the things I will address real quick is pvp.

There is very good reason to believe PVP will be added to the game. They already have an arena for it that has a unique NPC outside of it (a unique guard) that says that the arena is closed.

They wouldn't have gone through that trouble if they weren't going to have pvp.

Hmmm, I'll answer some other easy ones.

No humans are not blind but there's no reason to play a human. Just play a half-elf that looks human. You're a human in real life, playing a human in a video game isn't escapism; it's silly. I've always been a fan of not allowing humans in RPGs.

There doesn't seem to be a feign death. Scouts can de-aggro though. I use it to silently grief teammates who get on my nerves.

The group debt thing is dumb as shit and needs to be removed. There's no other way to slice that. If you are fighting grouped monsters and someone in your group dies - there's no chance you'll live. Well, there's a chance but they need to do a lot of fixing for the aggro code. Right now a monster will chase you all the way across the goddamn commonlands.

Character power is based on loot and class. Mages need strong robelike armor. The weapons for the magical classes are negligible. Interesting thing, because loot is level ranged and quite easy to get the decent stuff - I don't think it will be an issue. Making stuff is easy as well - as in, crafting is a joke. Nice, but a joke. Problem is, prices will be artifically driven up because getting the damned books that teach the crafters the recipes is a pain in the ass (since it's random loot). Whoever came up with the system is a putz. Plain and simple. It's unimaginative and caters to power guilds who can order people to go out and hunt til they come back with a frikkin book.

Downtime is fantastic. There's very, very little of it.

Server patches have been AMAZING as well. Every Thursday we've had between a 100 and 500 meg patch and there's been less problems with them than the little putzy SWG weekly patches. The dev team deserves props for their ability to code quickly and efficiently. Some interesting weird shit went on when they added falling damage though. There was no checker for height, so you could die when you fell off a barrel or you feel into the water.

There, I think I addressed everything.

Ok, Schild.  First how about some background.  Did you play EQ1? When, and to what level? Just want some frame of reference for the first two questions I've got.  Seems from some of your responses that asking about the archtype system & how diversified the first split is (still at level 15? ) would be pointless right now.

1) How is the game LIKE EQ1.

 EQ1 did some good stuff, some bad stuff & some horribly, sadisticly bad stuff. I'm not expecting to hear things to bash EQ2 with.  I want to know if they kept any of the good of it. So far you've hit most of it, though.  Level of detail, depth of world & immersion of character.  What about depth of gameplay? Casters had some good gameplay (which most other classes felt was 'broken' or exploiting game features) in EQ1, while melee was, truly, hit auto and snooze.  How's it working out so far?

2) How is it NOT like EQ1.

Tied into the gripes you see forming in this thread already.  How has EQ2 addressed these at the low levels?  Is shared XP debit a big pain in the ass, or is that just the grousing of people w2ho don't understand it.

Also, you said they 'upped' the XP for soloers.  Ok, why?  The usual 'beta bitching' of a vocal minority or was there a legitimate reason to change it? EQ's strength has always been it's community, and I see it as a concern that they might abandon the grouping aspect in the face of competetors.

Edit:  Hell you responded while I was typing.

Cool on the patches.  Like I said before in some other thread, I think this is going to be EQ2's strength and WOW's weakness.  SOE is good about getting patches and pushing them quickly and efficiently (no BT, damnit!) plus they've taken the right stance (IMO) on exploits.  Bliz is glacial by comparison, and has said a few times they won't punish anyone for taking advantage of exploits they broke in the code. (Hello AC1.)

I will compare the two in an article sooner or later (hopefully sooner). I just have to get up the jones to write something. I've had a bad case of writers block (read: Lack of liquor worth drinking).

I can put it shortly though:

When I first started in EQ2 it was a unique, fun, overwhelmingly fleshed out original experience. Due to the inability of "Friends and Family" and "Power Guild Kiddies" to criticize SOE and glorify everything they do, it's slowly drifting towards the EQ1 territory.

Companies really need to grasp the idea that Friends and Families make the worst critics on the freaking planet.

I don't want to toot my own horn, but I posted a very long (about 5 pages) piece in the EQ2 beta forums about exp and other things below level 10. A lot of people said I was wrong about things like upping exp and a few other little cosmetic things. They fixed them. I don't want to over-glorify it, they may have already known they needed an exp bump. Point is, whenever I wrote something that challenged their mob mentality, I got slammed. So I stopped posting there. Why? Because screw them. I don't beta test to fanboi out. I betatest to make the game as likeable as possible. Anyway, there's a chance the "vocal minority" was me.

I got absolutely slammed for making a lot of critical judgements of the game from the jaded gamer/armchair critic standpoint. Needless to say, the beta forums left a bad, bad taste in my mouth. Note: Not because it was like normal Vault level fanboi spew. But because it was intelligent fanboi-wife/child spew that just wasn't critical enough.

Praising a game during a beta does nothing. You need to slam the shit out of it so that they can fix/change as many things in a positive manner as possible.

That said - you can't get a sandwich during combat. Meleeers (is that a word?) Close combat types play a lot like mages now (i.e. how scrappers and blasters play in CoH). I haven't been on a raid. Well, I have but I don't consider it much of a raid. I have however done a lot of dungeon crawls and despite some truly uninteresting level layout, I can say I love the look, the lighting and the experience but they could really use an inspired level designer. They felt like the kind of shit I'd expect from an FPS circa a decade ago.

I'll reiterate - the immersion of the game is fantastic. Freeport is really dastardly fucking evil. Qeynos is so pretty and nice it approaches homosexual stereotypical flower land. The voice acting is FUCKING GREAT. I'm so glad they spent the money on it. Other than the one girl, Ingrid or whatever, on the opening boat (The Far Journey), I have not found a voice I don't like. (That's to say, I don't like Qeynos, it's not my type of place, but it's still very well done. If it turned me off, they did it right).

The music - fantastic. All the beta people have the music in unencrypted MP3. I have it on my iPod - it's just that good.

EQ2 will still be about community. But smaller ones. There's supposedly going to be a max guild size - which is good. Splitting up the uberguilds could go a long way towards fixing the economic control. Haemish once told me that the chance for infighting would be huge. It's true, it will be. And I'll be in the front row with popcorn.

I stopped playing EQ1 a few months after release. I did beta test it for a long time though. The only reason I didn't stick with it was time restraints and moving to a new school. All my real-life friends I played with stopped playing when I moved to I just stopped as well - as much as I didn't want to.

((applause)) Couldn't agree more.

Can you address character creation? (EDIT: Bold added to be clearer, based on Morphiend's comment below.) From the murmurings I've gathered, the general consensus for character creation seems to be:

COH > EQ2 >>> WoW

How long does it take to leve, avarage per level, and total time to lvl 20.

How complete is the game 50%? 90%?

Do they (and you?) think they have any chance of beating WoW to release?

When do you *think* they are going to release, and how complete do you think it will be when released?

I understand a lot is speculation, but, go on, speculate.

*edit* CoH !> WoW (IMO)

Yea, finally some real info on the game. Okay here is my first batch of questions.

Graphics

* Do the character animations still look like they are done by students just learning 3D animation? Examples I've seen in videos include the super stiff movements like the stick-up-the-rear walk/run animations for Barbarians, sword swings that look like they should hit twice cause the sword goes all the way around the back and out the other side on the follow through, hand on the hip spell casting making you like a cheerleader and so on.

* Are arm swings still tied to the leg movement speed when moving backwards? E.g. in some spots when moving backwards your legs move super fast and your arms will swing super fast as well cause the animations are sync'd. Looks really bad.

* On your system (what video card are you using?) can you play with dynamic shadows turned on all the time?

* Do dwarves still look like scaled down humans or do they look more like the classic Tolkien/D&D dwarves now (short but wide)?


Gameplay

* How well does the Scout "combat wheel" work? Is the system similar to FFXI skill chains or is it more complex than that? Do you get visual indication of what's going on with the combat wheel in the main window (for all group members) or do you have to watch your chat window to follow what's going on?

That's one of the things I disliked about skill chaining in FFXI -- you ended up having to keep your eyes glued to the chat bar to participate (especially if you were a caster and wanted to tack on skills) rather than being able to watch the main window. The game could've been a text game given how little many players actually look at the graphics in the game during combat.

* How does the leveling speed compare to WoW?

* Is combat like EQ/FFXI where a group mostly fights a single mob at a time or is it more like CoH where you are fighting big(ger) groups at once?

* Can evil races/classes group with good races/classes? Can they quest together? Does that affect your alignment/faction standing?

* How much storage space do you get per character? Is it enough to store stuff even if you are a pack rat or do you have to mule like so many other games?

That's a weird distinction.  Playing an elven ranger is escapism, but playing a human rogue is silly?  Not all of the fantasy role has to be tied up in race, does it?  Can't some of the escapism come from - ya know - the dragons and the swords and the spells and the dungeons?

And to keep with the questions:

Have you have any luck creating a heterosexual character?

Can you clarify that for me, as it flies totally in the face of what i'm getting told by my guildies in the beta. I'm guessing you wouldnt like me to post info from folk in the beta even if i'm not covered personally but the above statement seems to be well out of whack.

How long does it take to level? Rough estimate. I know you mentioned 7 hours from 1 to 6 on newbie island because of all the quests. That's not too bad. Staying with the same playstyle of doing lots of quests, how long did it subsequently take from, say, 6 to 14? 14 to 20?

In regards to groups, what kind of aids are available to assist players in finding groups?

If you haven't played with a "bring-your-own" group, has it been difficult to form one up?

How long do you typically spend forming a group (including travel time, etc.)?

Would it be possible for you to time some downtime? You said it was minimal, but everyone has different opinions of what that should be. I'm looking at not wanting to ever rest for more than 30 seconds. What kind of downtime in seconds or minutes are you looking at at some different levels that you've experienced. Say 5, 10, 15 and 20. Note: I'm referring to solo play with whatever class you happen to be playing.

Are most quest spawns static? Or did they actually implement dynamic spawns (as WoW promised but failed to do)?

Do you start off killing snakes, rats and jiggling goo in typical lame-ass RPG style or do they actually give some real enemies to fight as a new adventurer?

<star wars>
I've got a baaaad feeling about this...
</star wars>

Schild may not create attractive characters, but I believe all the women he plays are heterosexual.

OK, OK.  Let me put aside the sexist POV and be clear:

All of the EQ2 char screenies posted on F13 earlier all looked like HOMOSEXUAL MEN.  Have you, Schild, had any luck in creating a HETEROSEXUAL MALE character?

There's a whole lot of questions. I'll try my best to do it in an organized manner. Here's one I'll answer real fast. I refuse to play male characters, they make Pauly Shore look butch. Also, it's near impossible to play a bull-dyke female.

This is what I read, in order, since my last post.

Character Creation
Character creation in EQ2 has the potential to be amazing. The guy designing the character traits and clothing is an uninmaginative ass. I don't know who it is, but it looks as though he made female hairstyles and burnt out. Still better than WoW. Which has, what I consider, the worst character creation I've ever seen.

Leveling
Leveling isn't that harsh. I could easily get a level a night if I wanted to just by questing and/or grouping.

The Gaming Completion
I'd say the game is 60% done from my angle, 80% done from SOE. I say that because I have a LOT of problems with the game which I'll address in my article or address as you all ask the stuff.

Can they beat WoW to release?
Haemish won't agree with me on this (because EQ is RAPING HIS COMPUTERS) but EQ2 is less buggy than WoW. It's also more feature complete. Far more feature complete.

Graphics
The walking animations were just redone. They are doing a lot of what we would call 'shiny' right now. It's kind of nice too, every week brings a lot of changes that I hop in, look at and hop out. Like I said, I'm not getting burnt out on it before release.

I have dynamic shadows turned on sometimes. It runs fine. I turn them off because I don't really give a shit about shadows when I'm in a group of 6 people fighting hordes of the undead or stuff in the Wailing Caves or wherever.

Dwarves are fantastically tolkeinesque. Seriously, the races that aren't humanlike are very very well done.

Gameplay
I play a scout on my main. I don't even have to look at the chat bar. Ever. It's just not necessary, everything is visually intuitive. I can tell when and what Ineed to do. This game is very very visual. Monkeys could play a priest. Even the heroic oppurtunity wheel (a system for getting crits/extra damage/enhancements for your group) is very very easy.

Leveling is on par with WoW. But I don't wish to compare them like that. In EQ2 you get stats, skills, everything automatically. New abilities just appear on your hotbar - EVERY LEVEL. If we want to talk about low end game and usability - from level 1-15 (being low end, 15-30 beyond mid, 30 and up being high), I used every single skill except for one (due to not being implemented at the time). They were all useful.

In some places you will fight a lot more than one enemy. In other places one enemy is too much to handle. It's a nice mix. Nothing is on par with the frantic pace of CoH though. At least not all the time.

I never did the betrayal quest. I can not talk about the interplay between the good and bad players. Only because I don't know. But like I said, there IS a betrayal quest and people have done it. I refuse to go good.

Storage space is REASONABLE and there are ways to improve it. You won't need a mule if you aren't a packrat. Even if you are a crafter.

Meso - elves don't look like humans. They are much more feminine. I play a darkelf and a halfelf. In real life I could tear the tarnish off an antique chest with my masculinity. Errrr, tmi? k.

Crafting
It's really fucking easy. You push some buttons, combine very few materials, and wala, you have your item. Anyone telling you it is hard is a stupid mouthbreather who needs to not be allowed in a guild.

This is the easiest crafting system I have ever seen. But it's effective and that's important. Oh and I've died while crafting. Not because I'm inept but because my mage didn't have enough hitpoints to take a furnace blast.

Having Crafting be like Combat is stupid. But they won't change it. They are very excited about it.

Soukyan - I ran out of titles

The exact time it takes to level is hard. I could easily do 1-10 in one night. Just because I know how to be uber efficient.

LFG. What else do you need? You aren't actually going to have your chat channels turned on are you? In which case I say, turn them off.

Making a group is simple. I sit at the entrance of the place I want to group in, and within 5 minutes I have a group. That may be because I'm a rogue wielding two spears looking all sorta of darkelf badass. Or not.

Haemish was telling me he didn't like the downtime. Personally, I think it's much better than CoH. Perhaps we just have different experiences. I also have a laptop next to me that usually has a movie on it. So my judgement of downtime is fubar.

Quest spawns are static and dynamic. Or so it would seem.

You start off killing goblins, sharks, lots of wierd shit. It's neat. There's a little graveyard on newbie island. Lots of pretty. Trust me when I say this, you will LIKE newbie island A LOT the first time you play it. A WHOLE FRICKIN LOT. It is the most fleshed out place in any MMORPG I've ever seen. It's also the only good level design in the entire game (this is, I think, the biggest flaw of EQ2, other than gay males).

Keep the questions coming. I'm trying not to be biased, but I've had a pretty positive experience in EQ2. I got in before the other people here and before the EQ Legends/General Applicants got in. In other words I was playing with 500-1000 people while they were playing with 3000-10,000. I'd say they got a raw deal, but that's just how the cookie crumbles, etc etc.

Actually, I won't disagree with you there.

You just stated that EQ2 is more feature complete, but before that, you said the game is about 60% done in your mind,a nd 80% SOE.

Does that mean you feel WoW is less than 60% complete? Personally I feel WoW to be about 85% complete, and about 90% feature complete. But thats just me.

Because the fanbois are ruining EQ2. It's getting less complete as beta goes on. No, I'm not kidding. By complete I mean how close it is to becoming an excellent showing in the MMOG arena.

Heh, then I'd argue WoW is pretty damn close.  Really, outside of PVP which I don't care much about, the game is nearly done. I've encountered like 2 bugs while playing recently (on a borrowed account I share with 2 people, uggggg) and I think only hunters have yet to get any talents.  Of course, if you read the class boards every class still needs about 6 months worth of balancing (which is probably half true, but this is evident of most games).

It's really too bad I won't be able to try EQ2 before it hits retail, because WoW has already earned at least a box purchase out of me.

/sigh

Schild, you are making me lean toward checking EQ2 out. What do I have to lose, other than $65, a few hours of my precious free time, and a chunk of what is left of my soul?

It's worth it for newbie island. It's like a self-contained little world. I can't stress how much I loved the experience.

A FEW hours??? This is an MMORPG we're talking about.

You forget- I have done this before. MANY times before. I can tell <20 hours played whether it is gonna be worth it most of the time.

You can probably get more hours of fun out of the newbie island itself than many console games.

Good for you, it generally takes me about 2 months.

I love WoW and will buy at retail.  But I'm calling a hunch that EQ2 will be a better game all around.  It's really a shame that they have no plans for PvP implementation.  Battlegrounds > Me.

Edit: Schild, can you get permission to post a few screenies, I want to see your allegedly masculine character.

Every MMOG I've played since I quit EQ1, I've been able to tell within abotu 30 minutes whether I'd really want to continue to play past the first month. The only false positive I ever got was Shadowbane, and who knew what a buggy clusterfuck that'd turn out to be a month after release.

This begs the question: Is there a well-working windowed mode? I refuse to play games with downtime if I cannot switch to a browser or something while waiting for some bar to fill. If it runs full screen and I need to play some GBA game while waiting instead, I might as well just play the GBA game.

You have a lot of questions here mate so if I understand if my questions get passed over:

1.  Tracking.  As important as it was in EQ?  (quests, raids etc.)
2.  Combat.  Is damage confined to the tank - or is the whole group attacked by zergs or AoE spells?
3.  Models.  Are they being improved - did I understand correctly the dwarven model is being improved - are others being worked on

Thanks.

In related news, the "Tribes: Vengeance" multiplayer demo (ftp://ftp.sierra.com/pub/sierra/tribesvengeance/demos/tribesv_mpdemo.exe) is out now.

See, that's where PvP belongs. Not in Levelville.

I'm with you on that one.  I'm surprised to hear that EQ2 is ahead of WoW in feature completeness and bugs for that matter, but I'm not in the beta so it's simply guess work on my part.

Not hard as in 'omg mensa test'. However i'll quote direct from my friends email to the guild verbatim, feel free to delete stuff.



Any of this go against how you have found tradeskills? Granted the guy is a tradeskill nut so he went into a lot of depth, but c'mon, a freaking subgame to do tradeskills? I'm surprised they havent got gems back in there.

It's definately a lot like combat but with less visual shiny. Basically it's a testament to how much combat in MMORPGs suck. Crafting is crafting. I didn't even expect them to try as hard as they did, so maybe the underselling of it is why I don't think much of it. Tradeskill nuts don't make much sense to me anyway. Why is he playing EQ2 instead of ATITD2?

Well, they tried as hard as they did because Artisan was supposed to be a class entierly unto itself until a few months ago. Looks like they figgured "this is so unfun that even tradeskill buffs wouldn't do it full time" and that's when they decided to roll crafting as being open to all the other professions.

It's a case of 'be careful what you ask for.'  For years in EQ the crafters begged for mastery of craft to be more difficult than just 'throwing money at it,' and  for crafting to be a 'meaningful' ways of progressing through the game. Well, now they've got the first stab at it, it looks like.  Though, while a mini-game for crafting would be nice, I'm sure none of them expected to die from doing it.  I think it's amusing, myself.

Scrolling back through the beta forums and having played a bit of crafting since I got in - during the friends and family beta, it seems as though the artisan only thing was never actually implemented. It was always a little side thing you could do.

Hm.. well the F&F beta started only a few months back, though.  Artisan as a class was wiped before the betas all started, and has been since wiped from the offical site.  I could probably dig-up a link but it'd mean a foray into the Vault or Stratics, and I'm just not that dedicated to the idea.

During group formation, have you noticed a biased either for or against any particular race or class by players yet?

My understanding is they are attempting to make all types of fighters, mages, rogues interchangeable with one another i.e. Paladin and Shadow Knight are equal when it comes to tanking or damage dealing.  Curious if the player base has already started to define classes and races differently.

-Tige

Not from level 1-20. No.

How much of the content you ran into was instanced?

If you ran into any did it scale to your or a groups level?

Not much. Seemed to, though it may just be the fact that our group was adequately equipped. Of course, scaling would give that illusion. How the hell do I answer that question?

Yes.

It's also amazing how much SOE has released about EQ2 (http://clanwhitestorm.com/eq2info/index.htm) in general.

You stated before that combat for your scout was more like CoH...  Does this mean no auto-attack mode, press buttons for different attacks, or more like DAoC where there is autoattack, but you spend most of your time mashing a style button anyway?

Also, you said mages need strong robe-armor, and that their weapons were negligible...  Is there equipment to affect spells, a la the focus system in EQLive, or, aside from providing hp/mana you don't need equipment at all?

You mentioned crafting recipies are random drops(dumb)... is the same true of spells or combat abilities for melees?

--
Alkiera

P.S. yeah, I'm wanting to play EQ2 more now too... tho schilds comments regard it getting more and more EQ1 like are ominous.

I don't know why auto-attack turns people off. But of course there's autoattack. It's about as useful as Brawl in CoH though. In other words you can't win fights with it and can only rely on it as a last ditch (Even then, I'd run first). It's not like you can go away and get a sandwich. I think it's there just to keep the fight moving. CoH had autoattack btw. There just wasn't a default one. Illusion just covers up reality.



Yes, there is equipment to help stuff - but I haven't seen any to help SPECIFIC abilities. Each class has a slot for a certain item that works only for the class, like the daruma for clerics. Much like the shrunken head shield slot in diablo for necros. Do they effect single spells? Not entirely sure, I'm a scout. Well, my scout is my highest level character. I Also have a priest and mage about to hit level 10 or so.



You automatically get your spells and abilities. No training bullshit.



I agree. Don't blame me though, I've tried my best in those god awful 'yes-man' forums. I'm done with that.

I wasn't stating a preference, was just curious.  Is this more of a 'combat mode' toggle that happens when you first use an attack, like DAoC, then?  Or like EQ1, as a monk you could use just your kick/special punch and not actually activate auto-attack.  I'm a systems-whore, the Explorer in me doesn't wanna know what's over the next hill, it wants to know if I place a house on the hill, does the engine backfill underneath it, not let me place it, or does it cause the hill to appear inside part of the house...  (Example courtesy SimBeru)




This is more a question of 'are equipment requirements balanced across classes?'.  I.e., in EQLive, a warrior NEEDED good armor to be effective, and useful weapons to keep agro.  A rogue NEEDED good piercing weapons or they were useless.  A necro could be standing there in his newbie robe, and as long as he didn't get agro, he was nearly as effective as a necro with a lot more advanced equipment(pre foci and +mana regen items, anyway)

I played an Enchanter in EQLive, which is why all the odd questions.  I'm kinda curious how Crowd Control comes out in a system where you indicated you occasionally fought zerg-like mobs and smashed thru them in a near-CoH like frenzy.  A CoH-like combat system and player/mob balance in a complete fantasy MMOG setting would have my $15/month, almost assuredly.

--
Alkiera

Hmm, I guess that would be an adequate description.



Player/Mob balance is still off a bit. The aggro code is fucking horrible. I'm using 'fucking' there because it's just _That_Bad. So bad in fact, they need to start over. It's one of my biggest complaints besides crafting catering to powerguilds (who can work around the clocks to scavenger hunt for those damnable books).

As far as weapon balance goes. I was broke around level 8 and was using a woefully inadequate weapon in terms of game level. I was still effective in a group. But scouts have debuffs that aren't weapon dependent and combat attacks that have pretty decent multipliers. I'm not sure I'm properly equipped to fully answer the question otherwise. My experience with a casting class goes thusly: Priests SEEM to be able to solo the best. That's pretty much it. (As a priest I was able to solo everything except for 2 creatures on newbie island) If you need more info, I can dig through the beta forums, particularly for very specific things.

Another thing to note is quite a number of seemingly class/race specific quests didn't have rewards when I did them, but since then they've been added. Which returns me to something I can't stress enough - I'm not allowing myself to get burned out before release.

So as not to break the NDA, I will say I have NOT done crafting in anyway shape or form while in the beta. I just want to comment on the system as schild illuminated it.

It sounds half-assed to me. I'm all for crafting being subgames, being a mini-game, but they should be a fully-fleshed out mini-game, like EQ Gems. Just making it like combat falls into the problem most MMOG's have; their combat is generally boring unless it's against another player (CoH excepted among released games). If that's the way crafting is in EQ2, I may never touch it.

A small point of order:

You gain your spells and abilities automatically, but you do have to find a trainer or scribe to upgrade the power levels of your abilities.

Quoted from the web site Darniaq referenced above:

I bet Planetside's combat model would be a lot of fun in pve. I mean, you really can't beat lobbing shells into the midst of the enemy imo. Slap in some ragdoll physics for maximum comedic effect...

/queue Flight of the valkyrie - SO MISLEADING, SO MISLEADING, SO MISLEADING.

No. You just go buy some scrolls and read them. There is no trainer or shit to UPGRADE the power. Also, the shit you can buy from trainers - almost useless. You need to find or pay out the ass for adept level scrolls. I'm not willing to waste my time on the negligble differences between apprentice I and III.

Thanks for answering these questions so far, schild.  Here's some more!

Did you turn on the FPS counter?  What were your actual FPS in combat, town, and wilderness?

Does the chat work?  Seriously.

How big are the zones compared to EQ?  How long does it take a zone to load?

When fighting in groups for exp, do you camp an area like EQ and DAoC?  I.e., you hunker down in a clear area or in a corner or at a zone line and pull mobs from other areas to your location.  Or do you keep moving from area to area like WoW?

When soloing, if things go bad, can you just turn around and run away fast enough to get to the zone?  Do the monsters give up easily (like WoW) or do they chase you all the way to the zone line (like FFXI)?

How customizable is the interface?  Did they keep the snazzy XML do-whatever-you-want feature from EQ?

Varies from 24-8. Depends on where, when, and graphics detail level.



Yes, but I don't use it often. /reply will actually send /tell <name> rather then the last person who may interrupt while you're typing.



Commonlands is huge. Some zones are Deus Ex 2 small. Takes me forever to load or no time to load. They are still working on it.



Depends on the zone. Some can be cleaned out and moved through, like the graveyard. And some have a spawn rate so ludicrous that you can just 'hunker down.' Another thing to note is I really did get most of my exp through questing, while sometimes it didn't seem like it. Maybe I just wanted to lie to myself, I don't know, but grinding isn't exceptionally necessary.



Aggro code is broke. If they don't fix it I will be sorely pissed. I should probably do an article on just how broke it is.



The game is widescreen with adjustable black bars. Absolutely glorious. It's extremely customizable. Lemme indulge you.

(http://www.f13.net/schild/eq01.jpg)

Yes, that's a sword and spear I'm wielding. It's pretty cool. Scouts look like cuisinarts. I like that. </drooling moron>

Oh, and half of the windows hide until you mouse over them. Some people hate the system, I love it.

You broke the thread!

For Christ's sake, I was just trying to state a fact, not give an opinion.

You. Have. To. Get. Scrolls. To. Upgrade. Your. Abilities. And. Spells.

Whether or not YOU think it's useful is an opinion, I was just trying to clarify the game mechanic. Sheesh.

So, does this mean casters will yet again see the progression from
dinky fire spell
small fire spell
less small fire spell
fire spell
big fire spell
bigger fire spell
massive fire spell
etc?

Rather than CoH's 'Here's your fire spell, it gets better when you level all on it's own'...

*sigh*

--
Alkiera

But hmm, you don't have to get scrolls to upgrade it. They upgrade in line with your level. Scrolls are just a way to get that much stronger and appeal to zee uberguilds.

I wonder if anyone has the math on this. What is the difference in ability is for, say, a lvl 15 priest's heals with upgraded scrolls as compared to a lvl 15 priest who is still at Apprentice I? What are the differences in the high end game? I really have no idea.

I'm sure you are right in your statement, schild, I'm just curious about the nuts and bolts of it.

Saying you can go without upgrading your combat arts and spells is like saying you can go through all of eqlive with a rusty sword. Technically you can but I imagine you will not be happy with your performance.

Kaid

SOE == Time Invenstment to Crush!

Wouldn't be nice if this were solely an SOE phenomenon? Tell me an mmog where you don't advance/upgrade your character over time.  

I think SOE gets the blame because they built a very financially successful model incorporating it.  I blame everyone that followed for playing it safe and developing the same format.  WoW has it, EQ2 has it, and it's certainly not going away until consumers demonstrate their desire to pay for something else.

Truth... However, I get the feeling time investment is the game with SOE and they are the masters of working it into the design.  Your right though, someone needs to push the envelope.

Guild Wars?

Yes, please? I've tried contacting their PR people to let a select Bat Country group into the beta. They don't respond. They're too busy laughing at how badly they'll bury other games by not charging a subscription fee.

Guild Wars is going to kill us all.

After Diablo2, it is clear to me that I am too old to play a game without a subscription fee.

haha.

I imagine that you're probably right - although Guild Wars is probably going to have a the biggest population of B.Net kiddies since Diablo 2, unfortunately.

More better to have a group of people to pwn w/.

Yes, plz.

I can already hear baby jesus crying.

Let's see...play a massive game full of nards you find on public servers or hook up my nuts to a car battery....decisions, decisions...

Unlike WoW and EQ2 and other games, all the nards in Guild Wars are free game. It's hunting season. Free hunting season.

I'm going to start writing my frontpage piece tonight if I have time, though before I start are there any more questions any of ya'll want to ask?

Got a tough one Schild.. will EQ II kill EQ I....

Does playing EQ2 give you a warm and fuzzy feeling down in the cockles of your heart?

If they offer incentive for people to switch over, maybe. Right now? No. It's heading in the "EQ2 is EQ1 that you need to upgrade your computer to play" direction. I really hope that changes.



The environment and world go all the way down to the subcockles, but EQ2? Nah, not at this point. I mean, the world truly is heads above everything else offered, the voice acting is fantasmic, the music is just great, but they've still got a pretty long way to go.

Will I play at release. I've preordered the expensive edition. But only because if I'm going to buy it - I'm going all the way.

Gold Package. IMO, saying nothing about the game itself, Gold Package subscriptions to both games will do more for EQ2's success than any amount of marketing available.

Damn.. that is the key to the kingdom so to speak is it not...

In your write-up, be sure to mention that you can play a rat.

That alone is worth my 50 bucks.

And I could beat up retards, doesn't make it any more fun for me. I don't want them in my game at all.

Maybe it's a good thing...maybe the market will stratify into high-fee, legends type servers for the catasstastical, a free type of server for the bnet kiddies, and the current fee structure for the rest of us who won't have to deal with either of the other. Win/win/win imo.

Hmm...that's kinda how I see EQ. Love the gameworld, the factions, the dungeons...hate the game on top.

I'm considering preordering EQ2 and have (feel free to laugh) NEVER preordered a game in my life.  

Can you recommend the most reliable place to preorder EQ2 from? I'd like to actually receive it on or before release day.  

Thanks

EDIT: I don't have a good software retailer near me, so online purchase is best.

I have never had a problem with EBworld yet for online shopping.


kaid

I've never gotten anything in a timely manner by preordering from ebgames.com. Expect it 3 days late, even if you do overnight shipping, and you won't be disappointed. They always tack at least a day or two processing time, in my experience. For a recent example, I (foolishly) pre-ordered Fable from them with 2 day shipping and got it 5 days after it went on shelves.

Since you don't have a b&m nearby, I don't see what other choice you have, though. Best overall bet for getting a copy on release day is to preorder with in-store pickup.

My copy of Fable was late as well, but all of the other games I've ordered from EBGames have arrived in a timely fashion.

It's important to spring for the extra cash and order overnight shipping.

Bruce

Why would you want to pay extra to be in an MMOG on release day? Just order a hammer and an anatomy guide with big red letters denoting the location of your genitals and go at it.

Definition: Masochism

A willingness or tendency to subject oneself to unpleasant or trying experiences.

Isn't this a prerequisite for playing MMOG's?  They'd save some time by putting it on the box next to processor speed, video card, etc.

I still have scars from AO release day. Don't make me relive those memories!

The only game that I can remember being late from EB in the last few years, was Ryzom.  I now wish it had never arrived at all.  I only bought it because you can have a pirate hat.  It's true.  Honest.

Curse me and my obsession for owning a copy of every mmog ever created!

You need to be in the first day so you can use the r33t splolitz before they get fixed.

I know, like, this other guy who had 3 stormtrooper pets the first day of SWG.  Then again, that required him to spend 3 hours in SWG, which was penance enough for his sin.

I'm trying to think of a nice way to say this but I can't. Shouldn't somebody who is a little less fanboish about EQ2 be writing the front page about it? Sorry but you've been practically sucking Sony cock for months now over this game.

Have I? That's interesting. I thought I was sitting here saying it's turned from it's own game into EQ1-2. Oh my mistake, you don't like me dissing WoW. I'm very much non-fanboish about it, kthx.

What I would like to see in the write up is what is new by way of game mechanic.

...

This silence sponsored by NDA.

EQ2 is a good game.  Not everyone will like it.  I do like it.  Best mmog to date IMO, but that really aint' saying much.

WoW is a good game.  Not everyone will like it.  I don't.  I think it is too simplistic visually and gameplay.  Others disagree.

heh - Glad you clarified that - thought it was the new Bush Cheney rational for the invasion of Iraq.

Alluvian - by simplistic - you mean worse than WoW or CoH

(Blast it cannot get punctuation on this keyboard - travelling)

Isn't it against the NDA to even indicate you're in EQ2 beta by saying you're under NDA?

Bruce

Ahahahahahaha! Good one.


And what Bruce said. Most NDAs state that you cannot even acknowledge that you are testing for them. Not sure about EQ2 though as I'm not testing it... yet.

The first post in this thread mentions all the people from f13 in the beta. I have gotten some limited permission to say things. It was part of the condition by which I got them and myself in. When someone breaks NDA, I'll be the first one to call them on it. :)

Edit: I didn't like the...phrase I used the first time.

Another Edit: From the looks of Haemish and Alluvian's posts, they aren't exactly NDA breaking from a 'content' standpoint. I will say to actually back up Haemish's...Yes, there are new things, but they are so covered by the sort of 'meh' gloss that they have their work cut out for them (EQ2 dev team) at the moment.

Yeah, but your phrase was:



Which is open-ended to include any number of people you DIDN'T mention by name.  So... there are certainly people in the beta you didn't mention directly. :)

Anyway, I was just making a joke, not trying to get HaemishM (or myself) in trouble.

Bruce

The NDA was clarified (or modified) to allow you to say you're in the beta, but nothing more.

I'm still trying to work out what the point is of starting beta so late in a game with a substantial levelling curve. Have they been buffing characters up to higher levels or are they only intending to test their newbie zones again? MMORPG problems mostly tend to show up mid to late game from what I've seen.

I haven't yet seen anything interesting about EQ2. The existence of a combat wheel is primarily indication that combat is dull so you need a mini-game to keep you occupied. The class system with 4 archetypes and various flavors is either boring (if the archetypes dominate) or probably un-balanceable (if the flavors do).

That and SOE always screw up in execution anyway.

Tabula Rasa has the same sort of combat wheel.  It seems to be a logical progression in the evolution of MMOG combat design.  We had auto-attack, then auto-attack with special moves, then special times for you to use those special moves, and now a special timer which tracks your special moves and triggers new opportunities to use new special moves when the time arises.

Bruce

It's very console inspired and like FFIX too I would think. The problem with it is that it exists outside of the logic of the combat. People have already mentioned that a fighter doing a slice, shield block, kick (while solo) shouldn't neccessarily cause a lightning bolt to shoot from the sky and hit their enemy.

The auto-attack on / watch TV problem is better solved by situational chaos, balancing of local resources / abilities (which WoW has for what are traditionally melee classes) and co-operative effects within the abilities themselves (for example a sequence of melee specials that reduce AC / resists).

More seriously one report I saw said that most parties don't end up bothering with the combat wheel at all. Which is a pretty serious problem when one of the 4 archetypes is based around manipulating that mechanism.

I am also in the EQ2 Beta.

Or am I?

At what level?  In the combat wheel's defense, newbs in FFXI don't use the Renki attack chains either.  But as they advance it's required in order to be anywhere near an effective group.

The comment didn't have the degree of detail... sadly.  And of course no one has permission to say what the effort vs. return of high level heroic opportunities is like. SOE were considering doing a combat reaction system for EQ, where you get prompts and can then activate a special to match it, which had laughably inadequate returns.

I thought I saw you there.

... or did I?

When they tried that system, it was too radicaly different to install in a game that was almost 5 years old.  First problem with it was it added a 'twitch' element into a game that never had it. (Outside of Kiting or rogue positioning.  And those weren't split-second twitchy by far.)

By all accounts I read it was a 1-2 second window that was very eccentricly random.  If you didn't punch the key within that window then you didn't get your special.  And even if you did, the specials weren't very special anyway.  If they had been, it would have changed the EQ game too much and risked driving off players because it changed combat from 'attack and snooze' to something more twitchy.

I've always been fuzzy on Scouts. I know that Swashbucklers and Brigands are the good and evil Rogues, and that Troub"whatever" and Dirges are the good and evil Bards, but what about Rangers and Assassins?

Are Assassins like evil Rangers or something?

Like Rangers, is the bow their weapon of choice?

Hopefully, this info is not NDA protected.

Oh, and what about crowd control. I notice that Enchanters fall under the Mage tree, so what makes their crowd control different from the other Mage classes?

And lastly, how crucial are stats? Is it super important to select a race that offers a high stat, such as Erudites for Mages, or Ratonga for Scouts?

I ask this because I think a grey skinned Erudite Assassin would look bad ass. Unfortunately, Erudites have extremely low stats for a Scout. I really don't care that much. I'm not a min maxer. Just as long as the race selection doesn't totally gimp him out. That's my only concern.

And thanks for the Q+A.

Raven

Yeah, I'm curious about how the scout subclasses differ, considering thats the class you played the most Schild could you expound on what makes each variation interesting?  Or, is asking for noticible play affecting variation among subclasses asking to much of a Sony dev team?

Troubadors and Dirges are actually neutral. You get to pick either class. The others are good/evil variants.



Yes, though I'm going the Brigand route so I can't tell you much.



No clue. I would expect bows, shortswords and smaller blades.



In all of my grouping, I have seen very little crowd control. Good thing? Bad thing? I mean there are roots and whatnot, but crowd control is so far very 'meh' compared to CoH.



Not crucial.

As for the differences in combat between the classes. Scouts generally do best when in combat and behind or to the side of the enemy. They have anti-aggro abilities, some movement debuffs (ensnare), and other abilities that will keep them shredding mobs from an advantageous angle. Mages and Priests play like damn near any other mage and priest in any game. Warriors are better damage dealers than the CoH Tanker. They also SOAK up damage. It's nice. But they tend to die fast in group.

They have to work on the enemy grouping code.

Because I'm a lazy whore:

Q: Can you group with people of the opposite city?  Can evil group with good? How hard is it, at what level do you start to get quests that branch into 'opposing' territory?  What else can you talk about the alignments system?

Are you sure it was EQ2 Beta you were in?  Are you sure it wasn't... NOTHING?

Bruce

Nothing is stopping you from playing with people from the other city. I don't know how hard the betrayal tests are. The alignment system is made up of arbitrary boundaries and other BS. More important, the experience had from playing the game in Freeport or Qeynos is fantastically different. The cities are bipolar oppisites. I played a bit in both and Freeport wins hands down in terms of game environment. I wouldn't recommend anybody go good in EQ2. Ever.

So did you ever group with someone from the opposing city?

I believe I grouped with a high elf once. So yes. One of my friends in game also went all the way to Qeynos once and I do believe he grouped for a couple zones there.

Assassins are more melee inclined. To quote a HOC answer;



Basically, if you want to fling wooden sticks through the air, you're restricted to a Good-aligned class.

If Assassins are melee, then I wonder what the big difference is between them and Rogues. Maybe Rogues backstab, and Assassins can attack from any angle, as long as they are in stealth mode.

I am glad to hear that stats are not so crucial that you're forced to min max. Erudites have crummy stats for a Scout, but they just look very sinister to me, and that's what I imagine a Predator looking like.

Any non nda breaking info on exactly what differs between Assassins and Ranges, besides using a bow, will be welcomed.

I enjoyed Enchanters in EQ, so I'm super curious how they play in EQ2.

I can share this. I would never want to be a ranger because Qeynos is drab and hippie-type characters (druid/ranger) are nothing I would want to play in a game. At least not a virtual world.

Freeport is the place to be. I don't say this because I'm inclined to being evil but because it's just more fun. The passion of whoever designed all the characters really shows.

I officially hate you.  

I normally play the good_guy_save_teh_princess type, but now will probably be some dark, evil bastard.  Hell... may be a nice change of pace given the genre hasn't really changed much.

schild -  How many zones does freeport have? what level were you when you first left freeport? Hows the lag outside?

You can't leave freeport really until you're level 7 and a citizen. So I was level 7 and a citizen.

Zones...sigh, I'd have to look at the map. A decent number though. I never complained about the lack of places to play.

1.  Two boxing in EQ was huge. Many people like to play two chars at once. It created an uper soloing style of play.  Will there be the ability for smaller groups less than 4 to do well, or does it look more like you run either solo, or 4 plus people groups with little in between. I also know of many who like just to hunt with a partner and stay away from the larger group environment.

2. I plan on playing an enchanter. Can you say a little about if that mage class was done right?

I generally grouped in 3-4 person groups if that says anything. Of course, if I knew the other players I'd be more inclined to group with them. When I was constantly playing I knew nobody else in the beta.



I never play mage types. So, no.

Edit: Lemme rephrase that - the only magetype I play is necromancer/lord of the undead/the grim reaper, himself. Regular Mages and pure support characters bore me to no end.

How is travel time? Is the little run buff a nice boost, or something you've already grown addicted to.

And can you cast it on strangers, or is it group only?

Aye. I'd wager Assassins use more stealthed based moves. And traps.

Rogues, on the other hand, appear to dabble in poisons and special sword skills (Swashbuckling for example) when out of stealth.

Oh yeah, traps. I remember reading about that. I wonder if traps become available before level 20.

(I'm not talking about this board specifically, since I read many other boards and lots have been granted
similar extensions).

I'm beginning to realise how brilliant SoE truly are. By allowing some people, specifically community leaders, increased freedom they not only indebt them (to some extent) but also make them interested in enforcing the NDA to protect their own priviledged status. It's almost a feudal system, the king and his trusted lords.

Of course among the peasantry the rumor I keep hearing is "this game isn't going to be ready for november release". Although I'm almost tempted just so I can make a gnome and die in a tragic cookery accident.

Nice thread guys!  How about some information on casters next:

1. Do the different level 10-20 mage classes play much differently?

2. Is healing power a pain in the ass?  If it is I'm goin to maybe play a bard.

3.  Mages get static pulse at level 3 and static wave at level 17. Both have the same description.  I thought you basically got a spell line and then upgraded the spell as you gained levels and found/bought scrolls etc.  Whats going on with these two?

4.  What kind of pets do summoners get?

Great thread. I got two questions for now.

1. Had any alcohol? ;) I loved the way they made being drunk in EQ where your vision gets all blurry and you start moving around uncontrollably. :) I really hope they didn't leave that out of this game.

2. I'm pretty sure I already know the answer to this but are there any cool knockback effects when you hit a mob? One thing I love about City of Heroes is the fighting engine and how thugs fly back like 10 feet when you hit them real hard.

The media-status has been extended to a few places, so helping to answer what I can about the sub-20 game.


Food and drink buff Power well enough, depending on the food and drink. This allows for semi-sometime Sprinting, which can cut down run time.


Yes. Enchanter = CC, Sorcerer  = EQlive Wizard (flash bangs), Summoner = EQlive Mage (pets)


Food and drink buff it very well. Downtime is not nearly what it was in EQlive, quite on purpose. There as a Bard, I twisted three songs even during group rest.


Level ranges they can affect.


Yep. Power of the exclusive, and the two way street it is :)

What about travel time? Is it a pain without SOW?

If SOE releases EQ2 in Nov or Dec do you think it will experience a SWG type of launch?

Any experience with a monk? I'm curious if FD has been nerfed or not, or if it's still a nice get out of jail free card.

Is it easy to get lost in Qeynos or Freeport?

Do mages get invis before 20th? Is it still just as random, as in EQ1?

Are pet classes, like the mage, still soloing machines?

Do scouts seem to get cool looking armor sets, or will my 40th level scout look like he's 3rd level, just like it was for druids in EQ1?

Quest seem to promote soloing in WOW, do you think quest in EQ2 will promote grouping or soloing?

Do boss mobs still wander around zones, stomping down on lowbies, such as HG in Commonlands and Spectres in Oasis?

Are dungeons still as easy to get lost in, as they are in EQ1, or are they a bit easier to navigate?

Night vision looks gimped, from the screenshots I've seen. Does it look better in game?

How long does the average quest sem to take in EQ2? At least at low levels. Can most level 1-20 quest be polished off in 30-90 minutes?

What seems to be the most favorite subclasses in beta, and what seems to be the favorite races? I ask this, because I prefer to play less popular race/class mixes, like the erudite assassin idea I mentioned earlier.

Thanks for the info guys.

Feels the same as EQlive without SoW. Sprint changes things though, as do food and drink buffs, and spells to affect Power.


Lots can change in a month.


No. Ingame maps for city zones.


Depends on the quest. There are far more group-only mobs and mob groups even in the early level, and the game indicates this. Players group more within the same amount of time /played as they were soloing in WoW. However, the game is still very soloable in general.


Depends.


Yes. I wrote a log parser to map them, but only just finished it so only mapped one dungeon so far. I'm not interested in becoming EQAtlas, but some of these zones are also good for travelling vast distances.


It's very different. Night vision is not a problem. Infravision is cool as heck, though I haven't yet found a use for it.


Depends. You can do most quests within 30-90 minutes, or you can make significant progress in those that'll take long because those that take longer involve many parts and sub-quests, even in the low levels.


Changes each patch. Here is a good application of: play what you want :) Whatever you choose will eventually become popular, then reviled as gimped, then cause everything else to get nerfed. Makes the world go round...

I am wondering where the crowd control is - I only see one class that seems truely equipped for it - the Enchanter.  You think folks will be screaming for this singular class?

Also - in combat - is it zerg based - is everyone in your group attacked - or can the tank keep the aggro?

Well, it's still EQ, and in EQLive, enchanters pretty much dominated crowd control.  If you didn't have an enchanter, you did have a few options tho... use one of several methods to pull singles, feign death, lull, careful pulling...  use a secondary tank to 'tank-mez' a second incoming mob, or 'ghetto mez' one by dragging it away from the group and rooting it(a druid/ranger/pally favorite).  The Enchanter method is more effective, especially if there's more than one extra mob, but those other methods are usable by more classes, who have other things to bring to the group as well.

The second question is probably gonna have to wait for someone who's played the game.  Generally in EQLive your group attacked one thing at a time, using crowd control to keep other stuff on ice.  EQ2 may be less intensely that way, given what Schild said about some fights going quickly; it would make sense given the change of focus between EQLive and EQ2 that zerging(That is, loads of players vs. one mob) will be less common.

--
Alkiera

Well, Alkiera, they've already gone on record that feign pulling is out (I've been trying to find out if feign death is even going to be in at all at this point). So there might be valid concerns about the enchanter class becoming even more desirable at some point than it is in EQ, which I find very distasteful.

*sigh*

This is bizarre. Assassins should be the masters of poison, though the swashbuckling swordplay is cool enough for a rogue. From what Cosmik says, they sound almost backwards, rogues would seem more likely to use a trap, assassins the poison...

Ditto. Let's just hope they don't pull a bait-n-switch again and make us mana bitches for the endgame. It does kinda suck that you can't be a necromancer until level 20.

Again, EQ2 very closely resembles EQOA in it's focus and mechanics.

There is no Feign Death in EQOA. I'd be very surprised if it's in EQ2. SOE was not fond of all the innovative uses of this spell. It was conspicuous by its absence from necromancers, shadowknights, and even the monk class.

Crowd control wasn't a huge issue in EQOA. The enchanter in EQOA was a pet class with group enchancement abilities (mostly power recovery). They were powerful offensive characters in their own right.

Taking on multiple mobs was pretty much business as usual. You could do some pulling to keep from getting overwhelmed. Both melee and tank classes had ranged abilities and you could move while a spell triggered, so that was the usual method of pulling from a mob concentration. Since mobs "at home" would usual vary greatly in levels, pulling was a good idea. Wandering mobs were usual solo or in very small groups, so you'd just rush them.

I read this as: "You will take your death penalties, bitch and you will like it and come back for more."

Death penalties make games shitty, not exciting. I don't like shitty games. The break in gameplay and travel from a respawn are penalty enough imo, without adding more negativity in on top of that.

That's why I played a necromancer and a monk in EQ. With the (probable) removal of FD and shared group death penalties to boot, I have serious doubts about EQ2. Heck, my lvl 23 CoH guy died twice on Saturday and that was enough for me to put the game down for the rest of the weekend (I had carelessly flown too close to a mob for one death penalty). Being punished for exploration and for swashbuckling gameplay is the epitome of lame gaming imo.

I still believe that there needs to be some death penalty in online games.  Take WoW for example.  There is no penalty.  Some people would like to say that the penalty is simply having to run back to your corpse - that is if you don't mind taking the XP hit from the spirit healer.  But really, all it is is an inconvenience.  Having a death penalty in place gives the player accountability.  With no real adverse effect to dying in WoW, I play much more recklessly than I did versus playing in the original Everquest.  In EQ if you died you took a nasty XP hit  - sometimes wiping away hours of XP time.  Too harsh?  In hind sight I think it probably was, but in my opinion it did help to give the game more excitment.  You were careful in your battles.  When battles got tough and you were close to wiping, the adrenaline started going.  I don't get that kind of feeling in WoW, unfortunately.

I'm not saying that games need to have such a severe penalty to dying, there just needs to be something in place in order to give the player an incenvtive if you will, to play smarter.  In the end, a death penalty is really a double edged sword.  I died five times in a row last night in WoW trying to tame a beast with my hunter.  Had there been a penalty in place, well, I doubt if I would be very happy with the game or its designers.   I know there have been many in depth death penalty discussions over the years, and I've seen quite a few innovating ideas for death penalties, however I've forgotten what most of them were as time has gone on.

Liquidator

How about they give you 'half the distance to the goal line' penalty for the new (I hate to say new) durability system that they put in as a moneysink.  You die, all your items take a half durability penalty.

I do NOT like loosing experience to dying.  That was the most absurd thing imaginable.  It's mainly why I've stopped playing MMO's that have any sort of Death Penalty, CoH included.

Paging Dr. Geldon.   Ugg, another one of the death must suck crowd.

Really, WoW's death system is about as punitive as I want it.  I either choose EXP loss or I choose to hoof it back to my corpse.  I don't lose a days worth of EXP, I don't loose my gear, I don't lose all of my money.  I at most lose maybe ten minutes of my time.  That's fucking PERFECT.  

I'm done with 3 hour corpse runs and losing hours of experience. I don't want to have to be in earshot of a cleric everytime I die. I don't want to even have the damn possibility of losing my gear.  Any game that has a relatively similar to death penalty to EQ will lose my money in the goddamn design phase.  

Tension and adrenaline are nice, but some of us HAVE LIVES.  Let me have my fun, slap me on the wrist when I'm bad, and be done with it. FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

The conventions of EQlive can be applied here, but in the sub-20 game, don't appear to be as required. Healers and Crowd Control are still a requirement, but not strictly one type of Healer nor one type of Crowd Control. Of course, this is true in EQlive's early game too, and I've neither experienced the mid nor late game in EQ2, nor could talk about it anyway.

I have to agree with Rasix here. I'll keep my accountability IN REAL LIFE and take my immortality with the minor respawn penalty of wasted time running back to my corpse in a game. Perhaps some people need more to get a rush, but I had some pretty damn exciting, close battles in CoH and DAoC. Both of those have "mild" death penalties comparatively. I only got to test WoW beta for the stress test, so I can't say I encountered any large scale battles in it, but I did have some adrenaline boosting moments when I was in some close battles. I guess I just don't want to die in the first place even without a penalty, so that's enough for me to get keyed up on a close battle. I suppose for others who don't mind wasting 10 minutes of their life running back to a corpse, this is not enough incentive. It's a tough thing, death penalties, but I think it's laughable that developers even try to figure out accountability in PvP systems in MMOGs when they can't even find a good death system. Hell, it's just one of those "can't please everyone all the time" things.

And really, nothing beats the adrenaline boost of skydiving, white water rafting, etc. I'm not saying that games shouldn't be exciting, but when I think about wanting my pulse to race, I usually don't look to MMOGs. However, as we move ever closer to a full body virtual reality, it would be interesting to see those things translated into a virtual. Then we're talking some excitement. Imagine a fantasy world where you have to swing a handle with variable weight depending on the type of weapon you use in the virtual world. Then the character stamina would rely on you and your stamina. And your misses would be based on your skill. More hand-eye coordination. Hmm... that's a long way off and will probably never become popular because people would rather sit in front of a PC and eat Cheetoes and drink Coke. God cynicism sucks.

Ha.

I had a dream about this a few days ago.  But it was more like the whole matrix effect of 'your mind makes it real'.  You still sit and play games and drink you cocke and eat your Cheetos, but the game you are playing is so immersive that your mind tells your body that it just ran X amount of miles and swung the sword and clenched that ass.  So then your body reacts, and you sweat, and you get sore the next day.

Of course, it was just a dream.  But maybe something to quote me on in 15 years?

I don't drink cocke and clench my ass when I dream or...."Get Immersed." Whatever that means. ;)

I'll chime-in as agreeing with Rasix, Sky and Soukyan as well.  If I bite it twice in CoH I'm done for a good week at least, and I'll play something else.  Wasting my time is enough of a penalty to me.  Wasting my time AND telling me that several hours I'd already spent in-game were now wiped-out is just BS.

I get an adrenaline rush if I'm going to 'die' in any game, online or offline.  It's not because I'm risking anything, because ultimatly I'm not.  What I'm doing is testing my 'skills' at that particular game and if I die it's because I failed. I sucked at the game or at that particular challenge and now have to do it over.  That's where *my* particular tension and rush comes from. The internal competition of overcoming a challenge.

And yeah, I agree. If you want a real adrenaline rush then do something other than sitting in front of the monitor.  Nothing's more pathetic than seeing someone, ANYONE, talk about how great the 'rush' of killing pixels is compared to something more phsyicaly taxing.  Yeah, it can get your heart pumping, but it's NOT something you can compare to RL experiences.

Amen. Call me a pussy-boy carebear, but I don't want to lose XP when I die. I just don't. And don't hide XP loss as this "debt" bullshit. You're still losing XP, but instead of removing XP you're already gained, you're losing future XP you will gain. As fun as CoH was, the main reason I quit was the death penalties made a somewhat slow levelling curve feel even more like grinding.

If you die in a game like Fable or Neverwinter Nights, just load up and try again. You don't arbitrarily lose hours of progress. Why should MMORPGs be the same just because there is no "Save Game" button?

Dying in WoW is not fun, and I don't want to do it. Some of those corpse runs feel like sufficient punishment. But at least I don't feel like I've wasted hours of my time.

At times, the death penalty in WoW can be pretty heavy, especially with the now-nerfed soulstones.  I wipe late in some of the longer instances can cost quite a few hours of work, longer than most EQ penalties, at any rate (especially post-Kunark, when essentially every death was ressed).

Anyway, I think that death should hurt, but not too much.  How's that for taking a bold position.


As for FD, I think that what the EQ1 team didn't like about it was its use in pulling singles.  That more than anything changed EQ from a game where you dealt with a bunch of mobs at once to a game where they were processed individually.  Later expansions took it for granted that players would use FD pulling techniques, of course, and it became a bit of an art form.

So am I the only one who ever deliberately took deaths in CoH to keep from outlevelling my enhancements before I racked up enough influence to afford new ones?

Poor Geldon, heh. Has to be eloquent in his positions so that we point at him when the issues crop up. I tend to page him when forced grouping comes up ;)

Sorry Geld!

One more reason to avoid that city like the plague.

See I have the opposite feeling. I'll be hearing Boogie Nights in my head as I talk to her.

God bless Rollergirl.

That would be enough for me to want to kill anyone. I hated that fucking movie.

Death penalties are used in MMOG's currently to add challenge to the game, because most MMOG's really aren't very challenging. How hard is it to kill most things? Hell, even raid targets aren't hard to kill ONCE YOU FIGURE OUT THEIR GIMMICK. Whether it's chain complete heals or mezzing or feign pulling, the challenge is pretty much nothing more than challenging player persistence.

I think death should be the penalty in and of itself. I failed and have to do it again. CoH had it ALMOST right, though the debt can at times be really crushing.

EQ was just fucking masochistic. I would comment on EQ2's death penalty, but NDA would scold me vigorously.

Hell, I did that without even trying. :-p

Seriously, the only time I notice CoH death penalties is if I'm at what I call their Hell levels.  Basically the level(s) where you have exhausted all your missions until your high enough your new contacts will give you some.  I'm in one now at 24 and can't wait to grind through those last 2 bubbles to get back to what i enjoy; missions.  You can get out of a DP in CoH usually in about 30-45 of playing since it doesn't effect how you play, just how you level, so it's a cakewalk compared to making backwards progress of losing exp.  But still, dying twice in a session is a definate turn off.

It mostly mental, but the instanced area and reason to be hunting in them missions provide make CoH a totally different game for me.

Sorry, re-railing thread.

Original EQ's death penalty help set the stage for the camp-a-thon the first few years were.  It was simply the easiest way to minimize your risk of dying.  Here's hoping EQ2 hasn't kept to that tired premise.

Xilren

COH got painful if you went into a death spiral. As for EQ2's death penalty I read a little about it on the website though I don't know if they are still using the same system and you of course can't tell me

i've noticed a few people ask about Feign Death.

I read on the public boards that there IS Feign Death, that's it's an ability of the monk/brawler archetype (the one that is above both these), and that it would not be useable to split pull.

that's all they said about the subject on the public forums.

Hmmm, nice.  Can Schild or someone else confirm that FD is in?  The monk class was my favorite.  The only way I can see that FD pulling could be stopped...if FD is in EQ2...would be for FD not to wipe the hate list.  But really, in the higher levels on EQ1, FD hardly ever wiped the hate list.  What a fun class.

I can't confirm it because I don't know. I do know that I just logged in for the first time after 3 weeks and holy crap, I may have to give it another pass. The game got about 5 times better in terms of visual response to various assorted flare effects. Yay for SOE and the smokescreen.

Bring one mob, and it brings all 3-5 in it's group regardless of how many times you FD.  This is AKA 'Mob grouping' or BAF and would do-away with FD pulling while letting it clear aggro.  I thought I recalled reading about Mobs "grouping" in this manner in EQ2 a while back, but I could be misremembering.

I'm really looking forward to playing this.  I have no doubt that as PvE game it will be better than WoW.  But as I've said before.....


On a side note:  I'm on season 3 of Alias, and fucking blockbuster only has volumes 2 and 3 (each volume has 2 discs).  Whatever will I do?

I am glad they aren't trying to mix PvE and PvP like WoW. I've heard some things that make me a little leery of EQ2 but at heart I'm an MMO groupie so I'll try it anyway.

Ya, who knows, come Feb. I may be playing two games exclusively.

/. also says that


I guess I'll be hanging out around Freeport.

Damn, forgot to mention that.

Mad props for Saruman.  That kind of seals the deal don't you think?

Rollergirl and Saruman.

It's like one of my naughty dreams come true.

That's disgusting!

The big problem with FD wasn't that it allowed you to fight mobs one at a time (there were a ton of other spells/abilities that allowed you to do the same thing so FD was effectively just a form of CC in those situations) it was that with FD you could pull mobs through other mobs around them, bypassing much of the challenge in certain maps. With a skilled team of monks you could even pull uber mobs through his/her/its bodyguards making for a much faster, much easier boss fight.

There's no gameplay value in voice overs, no matter how skilled. It's certainly a nice freebie, but reason to play a game? Not to mention that I'd bet most people will be skipping them after about 5 minutes.

That's BS. There is gameplay value. THe first week or two I was in Freeport I ran around talking to everyone and hearing their stories because of how damn good the voiceovers were!

I don't know if there is gameplay value but there is definite..."ooooo" value

Are you playing the game when it happens? Does it add to the immersion and the fun factor you have? Yes. That's gameplay value. Not necessarily GAMEPLAY, but gameplay value yes - it increases the value of your gameplay. A lot.

That depends on if I'm on the list so to speak. j/k. Ok. point conceeded though we basically said the same thing. Just out of curiousity, can you skip the voices? If so I suspect most people will after the first time or two.

you can just read what it says and then walk away and they'll talk for a second, notice you left and stop. They may have added a "turn off voiceover" or "Play voiceover once and delete" option. That second one would be cool. Though there are some voiceovers I really really like that unfortunately only get played once. Like the landlord in freeport when you arrive.

I should stop talking about this now. I'm getting a case of the anxious MMO whore going...

still...sounds cool. Any other famous people doing voiceovers that you know about?

"No."

well, after Christopher Lee not many that could top that anyway. Still....damn...Christopher Lee that alone makes me reconsider my usual bias against playing evil

I would never play another game again if Christopher Walken did a voice over.

Even a small part.

Like a talking frog or something telling a story about lions or mermaids or something.

Fuck, that would be awesome.

MrHat,

damn straight.

An interview with Saruman is here:

http://movies.station.sony.com:7000/patch/web/eq2/lucan_interview.wmv

Stop trying to get your postcount up for an EQ2 beta or I'll have to disqualify you. Don't think I don't see through your glass windows. :)

Edit: Forgot the smiley. But seriously, no more postcount++

Tell you what. Last post tonight. In all seriousness I figured you'd already made your decision. If you watch how I post I tend to go through these big bursts then go quiet for a day or two. this just happened to be a burst day cause work is slow and boring.

Edit: No fair with the WoW crack when I said I wouldm't post anymore.Though I don't think edit counts. Ok, hitting the X now and going to watch the debates and play some Gladius on the XBox.

Gotcha.

There are two types of mob groups. Because they appear even in the earliest levels, it's safe to talk about them, and how FD would make only a slight difference.

• Collection of solo mobs standing near each other. Subclassification: aggressive or not. Smart pulling is the rule here as it was in EQlive.
• Group-tagged mobs. You will pull this whole group. It becomes a CC exercise thereafter[/list:u]
  Importantly, you know this stuff the moment you click a mob. The game gives that much information about it.
  
  
  Quote from: Kageru
  There's no gameplay value in voice overs, no matter how skilled. It's certainly a nice freebie, but reason to play a game? Not to mention that I'd bet most people will be skipping them after about 5 minutes.
  
  I'm with schild on this. There's no real tangible measurable value to it, but it really does add to the experience when every single other MMORPG is a world full of mutes.
  
  Doing 130 hours of voiceovers is extremely expensive, even using skilled no-name talent. This is probably why it's always the absolute last thing considered for most games. EQ2 has the huge ass budget to pull it off though ($25mil or thereabouts) , so I appreciate that they decided to try.
  
  Yea yea, I expect some will ask where that money coulda gone otherwise. I still wonder about the time spent to develop SWG Image Designers, so I'm certainly not immune to questions of that sort :)

I have over 700 posts on the vnboards... shouldn't I get a prize for that?

Oh wait... that would be the rash and projectile vomiting.

:(

There is no gameplay because listening is passive. Where there is no choice, other than listen or click the shut up button, there is no game. The information contained in the speech can lead to gameplay, but the quality of the voice over person will not directly effect that element.

Sure, it is a nice addition, and bad voice overs can screw up your immersion in the game, but I find it hard to imagine anyone choosing a game on that basis. Heck, it could be 2 hours of him bitching about how he got stiffed in LoTR-3, does that still count as gameplay?  In addition I'd be less worried about the top of the talent they've got and more worried about the average or low end. You'll spend more time talking to vendors,  bankers and miscellaneous quest NPC's than you do Lord Lucan.

Incidentally the NDA is not commutative, but I imagine re-posting leaks still counts as unacceptable?

If you want to believe that voiceovers aren't part of gameplay value, fine. Good luck arguing with the legions of people who loved Sam and Max or Grim Fandango.

Actually my mental image was "dragons lair".

I hated FD splitting, though it was my job so I did it. I see FD more as a method of escape, surviving bad groups, getting lost in dungeons, wandering mobs, and other assorted oh crap moments, that can happen when you least expect them.

I survive bad groups...and good groups with the de-aggro skill.

Not to mention the last couple of GTA games.  The game would have felt half-done without them.

Fable without the voices would have been total crap. I enjoyed the important characters voices. For example, that cajun chick's voice made me want to kill her. Repeatedly. With a crossbow.

I couldn't imagine Leisure Suit Larry without voices with the great job they did with the last one (even though the game was lackluster).

For what it had, Planescape Torment had some great voiceovers. And how can you forget Boo & Minsc from Baldur's Gate.

Jesus, I don't even know why I'm entertaining such a comment.

This deaggro ability sounds interestings. Can you go into detail on exactly how the deaggro ability works?

Uhm, if you're fighting with another grouped player and you hit the skill button, the monster stops hitting you and starts beating on your friend. With how often I use it (it's hard to get good armor without crafters around), it should be called Grief-Grouping.

Black Isle had some good VO work in their stuff.  I'm always just slightly disappointed they didn't have Steve Buscemi voice the sarcastic beholder though; it just seems to me like that should have been done :)

"Oh captain my captain..."

Great voice overs really do help with immersion.

Would you agree that when an NPC flings the the same insult at you that you've heard 248 times before, it can be immersion-breaking, as well as being pretty damn annoying?

You won't escape me Ardent!  You orange-haired cartoon characters have ruined your own lands, you won't ruin mine!

You must gather your party before venturing forth!

Sure did with Sheena Easton doing the voice of Anna.  I think she was dating one of the producers at the time.   Looking over the rest of the voice acting shows some pretty accomplished and well traveled voice actors.  

Good voice acting makes or breaks a game and just adds so damn much.  I don't think the last 2 Monkey Islands would have been the same without the stellar voice acting.  

Really looking forward to seeing what it brings for a MMORPG.

Yes.

However, quantity of voiceovers matter. If there's just one voice, I'm turning off the repeating voice. That's not dissimilar to Peter Gibbons heading to Chachkies (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151804/) to escape "Corporate Account Payables. Just a miinute".

Conversely, if there's an entire town of voices, with some spatially close by, some further away, and all saying something different, that creates the acoustic din we expect from the real social environments EQ2 tries to emulate. That's the immersion EQ2 is attempting.

Whether that matters to a player is personal.

Now that is very interesting information Darniaq.  Damn interesting.

"Look at him chase that chicken! It's Chicken Chaser! Look at those chickens run!"

^^

I still expect, accoustically correct crowd ambience or not, players will be hitting the "shut the hell up" button so they can find out which XP generating foozles are in need of a good kicking. EQ2's choice to invest so much of their developer effort in cities also makes me wonder how developed the rest of their game is. It would help explain why they're limiting reviews and reports to the low level game.

Finally I also think people are still confusing gameplay environment and game. If you take the puzzles out of sam and max you have an animated movie. If you take the cut scenes out of sam and max you still have a game. A much poorer one, sure, the voiceovers connect the gameplay, explain the gameplay and reward the player for success. But they're still not gameplay because they do not require interaction or thought.

Incidentally I've seen two rather detailed, NDA breaking, reviews that summarised it as EQ1 for dummies.

You can shut off the voiceovers. It really doesn't matter. The dialog is all menu driven anyway. The game is not affected by the voiceovers, and I doubt the development path would have been any different if they just went without them. There's a certain point a project reaches where adding more warm bodies does it no good.

If XP and loot faucets are your primary motivation, nothing prevents you from hitting Allakhazam or equivalent. EQ2 is just as grindable as EQlive. Except for the immersive qualities, and one of the few user interfaces I actually feel is good, there truly is not much of a difference between EQ2 and EQlive, nor really even in WoW. They are all flavors of the same motivations. Features are different of course, and both are vast improvements over some prior offerings. But neither is invention. I'm sure that shocks no one.

The only "innovative" thing in EQ2 and WoW is that you don't need to grind. You can actually take on dozens of quests (though I believe WoW still caps at 20) and never want for something to do. What you do on those quests is the same old stuff, but the XP, money, and item rewards are also relevant. You also don't need to schedule spawn rotations weeks in advance, but that's less innovation than simple logic applied to a niave/stupid/misinformed design decision.

Unfortunately, mudflation will affect both. Even though equipment scales with level, quests do not. Just like in EQlive, you can take a quest in these new games that results in a ridiculously inferior item, or an imperceptable XP or monetary reward. Eventually that quest gets ignored, as are  thousands of quests in EQlive (http://everquest.allakhazam.com/dyn/quest_item_index.html). It's an endemic problem with static content, no matter that the static content is designed to ensure newbs three years later have something to do.

Veteran MMORPGers will see a bunch of stuff they expected. Some will beat the games because that is what they do. Others will try and suspend their disbelief for a time, and maybe they actually will. Both are enjoyable for similar reasons, but both tweak things to appeal to slightly different types of players.

Until level 20. Because I don't know anything beyond that.

Actually SOE recently announced that *they* would be providing a complete listin of all items in the game on their website. And for 99 cents you can get the full stats of every item in the game, for another 99 cents you can upload your characters gear and display it publically.

I will be extremely interested to see if EQ2 can maintain quest based progression to the endgame. Given that the levelling curve is subtantially greater than WoW's the amount of content that would demand would be impressive. This assumes that the quests are hand constructed (WoW) as opposed to machine generated (SWG, EQ). WoW has also pledged to provide quest progression (hero classes, life quests) in the end game which is somewhat novel I think?

But yes, neither of them is massively innovative because both of them want to attract massive populations, which means they need to aim at the casual / mainstream audience. Both of them have some controls on mudflation I would think, given they both have strict level limits on all items and WoW is extremely agressive with the no-drop tag.

This pissed me off at first.  But the more I think about it the more I like it.  As a general MOG feature that is.

Goodness, how unexpected;

"The main issue I have with the quests however is that hailing everyone in the zones takes a long time and you have no idea who will give you a quest or not, in fact some are just lore NPC's who tell you a story for a minute without giving you a quest. For this reason I find myself just speed hailing everyone. I hail them then click past all the speech quickly so I can get the quest and move onto the next person. Your quest journal holds all of the information you need, so there is little to no point in listening to the audio voice as it mostly just spends ages getting to the point that you can get in two seconds by looking at your journal."

The review itself is pretty extensive, but the tone is not overly positive;

http://www.jaded-gamer.com/content.php?article.52

And cheaper than paying for Allakhazam's "premum" content.

Magelo, on the other hand, was free, no?

It was perfectly functional without paying, as was allakhazam. Becoming a subscriber to Magelo let you download a tool that would automatically keep your character up to date and thus verify it as accurate. An important element in the EQ-peen wars. And of course magelo led to a web site that sorted them on various attributes, so you could know where you fit in the game.

Whether SOE absorbing all these functions actually leads to a growth in the community is more than a little dubious though.

Is the crafting/resource gathering at all interesting?  I like to run a merchant template about a third of the time and a gatherer/explorer another third.  If it's good stuff I'd be interested in the beta afterall.

And you all seem to have forgotten KOTOR.  

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Meatbag.

No one has asked about the betrayal quests. Is that only available after level 20? That would be news in and of itself.

You can do them before then. No one's mentioned them because not many people have done them. Very dedicated players who want that Troll Ranger (Evil race/Good class) will go for it (start in Freeport, level to high teens, betray), but the rest will just create an Elf Ranger (Good Race/Good Class) and start in Qeynos (start in good city).


Crafting is a grind, but it takes longer and requires you hit keys when specific events pop up. In the sub-20 game, most recipes can be crafted with store-bought goods, from NPCs that are in the same tradeskill zones in which you conduct your crafting. It's a matter of having the money to do that. Non-twinks can afford it, but only if they don't dedicate themselves solely to crafting. Twinks can afford it more. Guild-supported mules can afford it most of all. Par for the course.

Resource gathering involves running around looking for dynamically spawned objects you can /harvest from. It is more visually interesting than UO's hidden resource points, more dynamic than WoW's static resource points (though the interface for harvesting is the same), and a lot less unnecessarily convoluted than SWG's resource surveying and harvesting. It has UO-like variables too. The same resource point can result in different harvested stuff.

And the interface that drives resource gathering also facilitates many non-craft-related quests. Just like WoW.

In EQ2, your quest journal is sorted by the quest source location (the place where you got the quest from). In WoW, your quest journal is sorted by the quest destination (where you have to go to do the thing).

The game that will win the quest journal wars, in my eyes, will be the first to allow you to sort both ways at your choosing. That way you can sort by destination when you're off to go adventuring, then sort by source when you're ready to turn in your quests for XP and phat lewt.

Yep. $0.99 per month per feature, or $2.99 for all four. (http://www.gamergod.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=103)

A bit extra per month for what players have done themselves for years. Those players didn't get that for "free" though. They had to pay for hosting, maybe a URL, maybe the EZboard block-banner premium, maybe they paid Magelo or Allakhazam.

This is a nice idea. It's a shame SOE had to charge for it, but an extra dollar or three a month is simply being paid to them instead of others.

I have no idea how good the service will be of course :)

No way SOE will do it as well as an independent site. The updates will probably lag reality and acquisition details. Allakhazam provided the where and how for items, not just the stats. I don't see SOE spoiling themselves to the same extent.

That's a poor design decision.  They should really do something like World of Warcraft where you are able to diferentiate between a standard NPC and a quest NPC.

Meh. I like immersive worlds. That's one thing EQ2 provides in spades. Just because that powergaming jackass didn't like that he could read the quest journal faster than the people spoke doesn't mean that the Micromachines guy (from the 80's commercials) should do all the voiceovers.

I'll finish reading it later, though I probably shouldn't since I'll eventually get around to my writeup.

I feel that's why SOE is not doing it though. It's about flavor. Nothing says "game" like a bunch of NPCs with floating icons over their heads. It's easier to suspend one's disbelief without them.

Conversely, those icons are good motivators. Instant content, a beacon of something to do. So many players of EQ2 beta really don't think there are many quests. They end up trying to find something to grind until they work up the courage to complain about it, only then becoming corrected by the answers.

Agreed,

But why could SOE not have the frikken quest NPC's wave at you, or yell, 'Hey Dude, I have a quest for you." when they get with in range of the approach bubble?  Or do they?

Honestly, the [!] from WOW works in my book.  I friggin hated quests in EQ that made me track down some idiot in the middle of some multi zone city...

Well, I may be out of bounds here since I haven't tried EQ2 but it sounds to me like the strategies for WoW vs EQ2 in the quest giver NPC area boil down to this

WoW: Easy to find, convenient, just look for the !

EQ2: Immersive

I suppose both approaches have their pluses. In a perfect world we could have both. :) Maybe the NPC doesn't look different or anything but you have a waypoint on your ingame radar. Assuming EQ2 has one of course.

The [!] to find NPCs that have quests is nice, but not essential.

The REAL life-savers are the [?] to figure out who it is you're trying to find, and to avoid spending 10-15 frustrating minutes trying to track down the guy you took the quest from in the first place.

It does. For example, there's an NPC in Nettleville Hovel (a Qeynosian starting zone) that lost a broom. You know this because you're running by and she complains that she's lost her broom in both text and voiceover. If you talk to her, you get a quest to help her find a broom.

The voiceovers in EQ2 are like the exclamation points in WoW. They're just far less obvious.

And they're counterintuitive to some experienced MMORPGers. It honestly didn't occur to me to interact with that NPC until the third time I ran by :) It's only after that point I recognized the purpose of the voiceover, even though I had already been /hailing everything that moved because of previous conditioning in SWG and EQlive.

It's simple, imo. If you want the !, go play WoW. Problem solved.

The guy who skips the VOs and just checks his journal? Great for him, if he wants to reduce the game to it's bare fundamental. I just hope that some bone-headed designer doesn't 'fix' that 'problem' in some way that's crappy for the players who enjoy the immersion.

But my opinion is along the lines of most of my opinions, it's about choices. If enough people want the !, then put a checkbox in the options menu somewhere and let them see quest npcs. Voila, both camps are satisfied.

I enjoy the immersion of NPC stories and lengthy quest dialogue.  I can see a place where limiting this a bit might help: alternate characters.  We all dabble with more than one character at any given time and it can be a bit less than immersive to hear the same stories for the 5th or 6th time.  

Sky's suggestion of a toggle may actually make the system a bit more replay friendly: Turn off the lengthy dialogue for the quests you've done, toggle it on for those you have yet to experience (i.e. class, faction, or alignment specific quests).  Or another alternative may just be to allow the shortening of quest dialogue below level 20.

Coloring the names of quest NPCs differently wouldn't change immersion at all, although it might screw the colorblind.

Dammit Darniaq.. now I am more interested in EQII.  I swore SOE would not tarnish any more of my soul since SWG lanced my spirit with its disease.

Now I will see how many bloody MMORPG's I can play at once...

It is really about options, and I'm with Sky and shiznitz here.

It really wouldn't break immersion in any meaningful way to have either the exclamation point nor color-coded NPC names (they are already color-coded, but they could just add more colors) as an option.

• You can check an option that displays this big honkin' pulsing arrow over an NPC/mobs head, color-coded for con and whether it's aggressive or not.
• You can check an option that projects a rotating halo around the feet of the target NPC.
• You can have both and the NPCs name on as well.
• You can have all of that plus have the NPC glow when you mouseover them (as interactive ground objects in both EQ2 and WoW do). [/list:u]
  None of these are what someone would point to as high examples of total escapist immersion.
  
  I don't have some of those on. I have the foot-based rotating halo and pulsing arrow on, but I'm still trying to decide which I like more. The halo is useless is group vs group combat. Too much stuff in the way. However, the pulsing arrow does get in the way of the beauty of the game, particularly when I'm exploring. I've been looking for some /slash command that toggles these two, hoping to make a quick macro for them so I can just hit a key on the fly.
  
  I also don't run around with full-time NPC names overhead, though I do spam the Select Next NPC key when looking around an area. I like the effect of seeing inhabitants but not immediately knowing who they are until I go in for a closer look. My eyesight in real-life sucks to (that's not a shocker though). I sometimes turn player names off, and can because EQ2 uses chat bubbles so it's easy to see who's saying what if they're within view.
  
  But everyone's different. Nobody's wrong, unless they try to present their preferences as Good Game Design(tm) to anyone who has different preferences :)

The Bard was one of my favorite classes in the original Everquest, even though I never played one past level 30 - by the time I finally rolled one, I had played the game for years and come back from my second burnout so I didn't last long.  Anyway, Bards were always a welcome addition to any group I was in, and from my brief time with the class, they were very enjoyable.  What with all the song twisting and versatility.

Just curious if anyone has played one in EQ2 and how they compare to the original Bard from EQ?

I am. It's my primary, though lately I've switched back to Sorcery. Flash bangs are fun.

I loved my EQlive Bard. My all-time favorite character, requiring a good amount player dexterity skills over the more mental skills of the other classes. But when I learned twisting was out for EQ2 (being something of an accident in EQlive in the first place), I went into the beta with lowered expectations.

Bards here are very different. They are more Scouts with songs than twisting machines, like DAoC Bards. What they lost with twisting they've gained in melee and stealth. Melee combat here is pretty fun. As schild put it, Scouts are like Ginsu knives. Scouts are not Fighters, but they aren't paperdolls either.

So the choice to play the class is more a function of what they do (group buffs, song-based damage types, melee and stealth) rather than how they did it. They are not as different from other classes and sub-classes as EQlive Bards were from everything else.

Oh, and there's no Selos. Scouts get the Pathfinding skill, which is group-SoW, but it's nowhere near as fast. :)

Questions I am looking to have answered if someone knows:

1 - Are there races that can use more than one size of armor (e.g. can barbarians wear both medium and large, elves wear medium and small, etc.)

2 - how does looting work... is it the old warrior loots and keeps all or is it like CoH where loot is randomly assigned to party members

3 - do heal over time and wards stack from same subclass, e.g. if two druids cast heal over time, would both work on same character or only the first one cast

4 - what is guild size cap


Appreciate the info,
Grind

There don't appear to be sizes.  One size fits all, unisex.


You decide whether you want in on the loot, afterwards, a random lottery happens and the winner gets the lootz.


Not sure.


Not sure.

So, ummm, what is the EQ2 "endgame"?

Trying to find hardware that can acutally run the thing comfortably.

$5000.00 later, the quest continues...

Three Gigs: The Quest for RAM.

From what I"ve personally seen and what I've heard from others more into the hardware than I, I think EQ2 is going to need another generation of hardware to really run well.

I'm going ahead with plans for a 3500+ (or more, price depending...) Athlon64. I suspect one might need an nVidia 7xxx or equivalent to really get things moving in towns. And gobs of memory. Fast memory. Expensive memory.

EQ2 is also more than a bit buggy. 6 months should have the new box ready to run and the game more reasonably vermin free.

Maybe.

I upgraded with a FX5700LE 256MB ram vid card + 1GB of new ram (2GB total) on my 2.5Ghz system and performace is still totally meh on medium detail settings. Maybe if I can outgrow the fucking city I can turn things up higher. More than 10 PC models on screen is just a fucking fps killer.

There is a ridiculously huge memory leak or cache issue in EQ II.  Apparently it wasn't there before the last round of patches before release but it is certainly there now.

Just listen to the whir of your harddrive, upon login it hardly churns at all.  30 minutes later you have to pause when entering a new zone for the swap to catch up.  An hour later and unless your rig is a monster it's stop and go, step, pause, step, pause, etc...

When I just log in I can play in Qeynos without too much pain, within 15 minutes though, forget it.

Opteron 246 (2.0Ghz)
2GB PC2700 memory
X800XT PE
Ultra 320SCSI with caching controller.

Runs smoothly at 1600X1200 with all graphical settings at high, and a few in the water and lighting set higher.

Sometimes get a little hitch here and there, but far and few between.

Though for most people a system like that is out of the price range.

With the most recent ATI patch 4.11 it has been exceptionally smooth.

Shit. I should have forked over the $$$ for a 6800 instead of trying to be cute with the 5700.

It's apparently a memory issue of some sort, don't know if it's a leak or what... but it's definately related to memory.  I have 512MB, and what Murgos describes is fairly accurate, tho I can play in some large zones, like Antonica, with little problem for long periods;  once I zone out, tho, I start to have issues.  My buddy you has 768MB of ram, and a lesser video card, doesn't have these issues at all.

Once again, the 'required' hardware is just barely enough to start the game...  recommended is where it's at.

Alkiera

My take on a game like EQ2 is that the journey itself is the endgame. If you chew/grind through content just to level, without trying all the small fluffy little details in the world -- like swimming around the water off the East Freeport docks for no reason other than to just 'see what's there' -- or to group with people and enjoy chatting/making comments between fights -- then when you finally do get to the highest leve in the game, you'll look back and wonder why the heck you rushed to get there.

If this is not your thing -- if you don't like exploring or collecting pixels or socializing or helping others do these things -- there's not much other point to EQ2, IMHO.

 

EQ felt that way too, until you hit level 50+ and the "raid game."  Does anybody know if EQ2 has the same dynamic, or was that impossible to determine from the beta?

Well, I've gotten up to level 12 now with my little dwarf warrior.  I am only playing this game because I was stupid enough to buy it, and I'm trying to at least get my $40 worth.  There is almost nothing I am enjoying about this game.  The world is just..... so...... bland.  I guess the only moderately enjoyable thing for me are the countless quests available, but then again I might as well be playing single player game if that's the case.  I wish I could put into words why this game sucks so much... but it's just so far beyond my verbal comprehension to explain.

Why, Kenrick?  Why did you blow your money on EQ2 less than a week before HL2 came out?  Why?

They should put this on the back of the box.  

Swear to God, I would buy it.

You're not alone man. I..uhhh..bought it too. Uninstalled it soon afterwards. Bought it the same day as Halo (which I'm not too happy about either). I couldn't resist though. If I don't get into betas, at least for the major titles out there, then I'm bound to shell out the cash.

Odd - I'm guessing if you never liked EQ1, you will not like EQ2. I like finding out what happened, or laughing at things in the world that are still the same (See tree stump in Blackburrow that dumps you into the middle of some high level gnolls). To me it's storytelling, but I'm convinced that something either clicks in the first 40 minutes of playing or it doesn't.

Ouch..Sorry to hear you are having such a bad time, Kenrick.

I think I like EQ2. But, the early stages are pretty bland with a lot of Fedex quests and disjointed, uneven combat.

What is keeping me hooked so far is my EQ1 nostalgia. I want to keep playing so I can see what Blackburrow and Cazic Thule and Velious have become.

I'm not sure if I will last that long though. The girlfriend is already freaking pissed. I haven't played MMOGs since we started dating, so she is just now getting to see my catass darkside.

Ohh the fun you have in store for you.  MMOPRGs are not good for developing relationships.  

Just wait until you have the extended raid that sends her into fits.  Good times, good times. "Look hon, I got my epic!"  *angry stare*

i just had my first foray into Blackburrow last night.  I'm in total opposition to most people here, who said they loved the first 10-12 levels, then it got too grindy.

I really didn't like the first 12 levels or so, now I'm really starting to enjoy it.  I think this will be a fun game, as long as I can stay out of the cities (lag, baby, lag....)

Yes, but you also loved the grind that is FFXI. An important piece of background info there. ;)

But seriously, I'm having quite the fun time with EQ2 also and probably will for some time to come.

The newbie island was the most painful, horrific, excruciating experience I've ever had in an MMORPG.  I almost uninstalled and cancelled right then.  I couldn't figure out what they wanted from me or where to go or why.  Combat was a mystery.  Whoever created that piece of unmitigated crap should be... well, I can't think of anything bad enough.

Then I finally figured out how to hop the boat to Freeport, and it was like a totally different game.  I had quests and waypoints and people to talk to and a grimy little apartment.  The quests sent me all around and I learned the city quite nicely.  I loved all the little quotes the mobs threw at me ("More is good, all is better").  It was very immersive, and I fetched and carried and zoomed around merrily - interrupted by periodic reboots to retrieve my memory when my framerate descended to slideshow speed.  I had some EQ1 guildmates walk me through Heroic Opportunities and what not and it was quite peachy.  I just reached level 10 and chose to be an Enchanter as a prelude to being a Coercer.

So far, levels 1-4 = suck.  Level 5-10 = love.  I just ventured out and busted up some orcs in the Commonlands, and that owned.  I can see it becomes a level grind from here on out, but that's what I loved on EQ, so that makes me happy.  I know, I'm a sick puppy.

Reached Level 15 Predator and the game has not become a chore or grind for me.

Here's what I've done to increase my enjoyment, and what the game has done:


1. Got it in my head I wanted to play an evil Kerran assassin before I even knew whether this was really possible. I have treated each encounter from his "assassin's" mindset. All of the quests, especially those in Freeport, have given me options to respond from this place of wicked delight. Fun "i'm hooked" moment was when the innkeeper gave me the option of evicting a deadbeat from one of this cheaper rooms.  I did it with some sense of an assassin's soul-killing glee, though was kind of bummed I didn't get the guy's room -- just his bedroll as a quest reward. Still, was for me a moment when I felt the game was going to be fun to play, not just a grind.

2. Turned off the display of my XP bar when I customized my UI. This one act alone has changed completely my experience of an MMORPG. I no longer worry about what level I am or which bubble I'm on or what my debt is. I just play. Levelling is now a pleasant surprise. I focus on what I'm going to do next -- complete a longstanding quest, try crafting, find a group to play with in Fallen Gate or the Wailing Caves -- attempt to talk to that bitch in Zonnvarr's Tower without getting my ass handed to me by 20 tortured souls...explore and map the Freeport Sewers...find more quests in Freeport...I see how much there is to do when I stop looking at my XP bar.

3. Chose to play a scout. The scout's combat options combined with stealth and tracking and great damage output and use of poisons and the way the skills are fitting nicely into playing a backstabbing assassin is making this game fun for me.

4. I tweaked and tweaked and tweaked the graphical settings to get to where my lowly 128 MB GF3Ti200 can play things smoothly, even if only the things near me look pretty. I'm enjoying the game enough that I'm speccing out a new system to get things to run even more smoothly.

5. HOs -- I kind of like these, though even in a duo group we sometimes have a hard time pulling them off. Now that I know how to make them work in groups, though, they are kinda cool -- still not enough to make me think 'new paradigm' but better than simple DAOC style chains.

6. No catassing. I have yet to feel that I'm catassing at any point -- no grindage, no camp the same spot for hours, just a sense of immersion and exploration.

7. No alts. I have not invested any time in playing anything but 1 character. This is helping me contribute my playtime to advancing this oharacter -- I'm usually an Alt-oholic. I usually can't stand doing the same role all the time. But the scout has enough variety to keep me interested.

8. The game does not crash; servers are generally stable but they have more down time than I think is good long term usually once a day or every two days for 2-4 hours in the morning, US time). Down once/week for 2-4 hours is acceptable, not once every day or two days.


Yes, there are still a lot of things I think could be better. For now, though, it's doing what I asked of it: entertaining me without making it feel like a second job or a chore.

Reached level 14 Crusader and was having a pretty good time, despite the memory leaks and EQlive refugess that insist on camping mob spawns. I never got to browbeat any NPCs into quivering mounds of fearful jello, but did get to idly threaten a few with bodily harm.

Then EQ2 turned my power supply into a silvery puddle on the bottom of my Addtronics case.

Ahh, well. New PS on the way, but too many old friends are heading to WoW, so I'll bow to peer pressure (and the demands of my creaky 300watt PS) and jump ship for the near future.

I'll be back, though...

Love the game, hate the forced groups. A game that treats solo play as anathema is not for Sky. I don't mind grouping, but not being able to do squat in an equivalent level dungeon without grouping is lame as hell.

Lvl 17 Summoner, no grindage except for a bit at the end as I tried to contend with group-only content and got frustrated by the artificial barriers to solo players.

If anyone cares to hear more about my thoughts after a week straight (vacation) with EQ2, head over to grimwell.com's forums. I'm tired of thinking about how let down I am by this great game.

Graphically, I didn't notch back much. Halfway on the animation distance, reduced lighting effects (in number, not quality), most shadows off (which does kill some immersion, great shadows). Running Maximum textures and most other options maxed, 1280x720, 4x FSAA/AF. Looks beautiful. Goddamned whore.