f13.net

Well, my friend has been playing EQ2, and having a great time. So I decided to join him, as I could get a copy for $20. I am having a lot of fun as a lowbie. I dont know if the grind just becomes horrible in the later stages, but for right now, it seems very fun. There are tons of quest to do, and the voice acting makes the game feel much more like a roleplaying game.

Maybe its that the lowbie zones are so underpopulated, that I dont have to worry about other people. The quests still all seem to add up to "take this to that person" or "Kill 10 of these" but its still kind of cool. I much prefer WoW graphics, but for now, its some thing new, and I am enjoying it.

I found newbie island fun, I also liked the first set of quests up until your level ten class choice.  Then I got sent out into the huge void of antonica/commonlands and the lack of good quests, the grind, and the poor game design all came crashing down on me at once.

It had enough potential that I resubscribed a few months ago, but not much had changed so I quit again.  I don't think I'll ever go back.  But if you have a steady play partner or group like you do everything changes quite a bit.  The game was a lot of fun on the rare occasions that I joined a group that wasn't awful or disbanded after ten minutes.

I personally found the game to be pretty fun until the mid-20's, when you have to do those crazy AQ quests, and have to go around fucking Thundering Steppes.


Oh yeah, and people were stupid, and the fact that you needed 2 healers (usually) made things that much more difficult.

The AQ quests mostly just required that you group.  Which is why they get such bad press here.

Ninety percent of players everywhere, in every MMO, are stupid, which is part of why people usually needed two healers.  My group of friends, when we played, typically only had one(varied between a cleric and a druid), and did fine. 

Alkiera

I had fun until mid 20's.  After that the grind took over, I couln't get anything done outside a group and exp came in at a trickle.  Also, I found out that Assassins were gimped.

I don't know if they fixed the imbalance yet but if you are going to do a rogue type class go with brigand/swashbuckler, nice group friendly abilities, lots of damage from all directions not just the back and a better armor class.  Ranger probably doesn't have the problem assassins do (few special attacks all with long timers) being as they are ranged damage dealers but you have to play in qeynos (blech) also I don't know much about the bard classes as they were rare and I only grouped with one once.

I'm still having fun at 41. Although the solo game is mostly over. Yes, it is still possible to solo but exp gain is about a quarter of what it is in a decent group. And at 41 most people are competent enough that most groups are good. It also helps to be in a 100+ member guild so groups are easy to find.

Having said that it is still VERY rare that we are grouping just to grind exp. We usually camp in an area where someone needs to either kill a number of mobs for a quest, needs a heritage named mob, or some other reason. It's not very often that I am just camping for pure experience.

And for those people complaining about thundering steppes it was completely redesigned about 2 months ago. There are probably upwards of 40+ quests in TS now with about 30 of them being solo oriented quests. There are only a few area's in TS now with grouped or ^^ mobs.

This is EQ2's big improvement over EQ1.  :rock: Ok, I just had to use that smiley. When I am hunting mobs for quests, I never watch my exp bar. Technically, the grind is still there, but EQ2 has replaced the level grind with a quest grind. The quest grind is a lot less grindy. There are still mindnumbing parts that make me think "why do I have to kill 150 grey mobs for this quest?" Luckily, those quests are not the norm and can be skipped.

If you have a friend you can group with pretty often there really is no need to ever grind. There are lots of nifty little instances to do and stuff to work on without ever just the pull/wack a mole grinding. I would also recommend the split paw expansion which goes live today. It is dynamic level wise so you can have fun in it at from level 20 to level 50. Some very nice solo/duo dungeons with good rewards as well as normal grouping dungeons.


Leveling is not as fast as in wow but I have never yet in 42 levels gotten to the point where my advancment was slow enough to bother me. Hell I even mentor down a lot to have fun helping guildies out in places like blackburrow because I enjoy it.

kaid

Not sure but I think this thread should be denned.  Unless we want to start a forum for EQ2 involving positive comments  :-D

Na.

We don't discourage positive comments on EQ2. It's just that they are so few and far between.

At least the forum is getting used.  I knew EQ2 was a failure when I noticed that the MTGO board was getting more traffic.

MtGO has spikes. Anyone who has played it sucessfully enjoys the game. Those who don't enjoy the game can usually very very pinpoint the reason they don't. For example, I hated standard during the OLS/MD5 rotation.

Everquest 2 has the more ethereal problem of just being a bad MMOG. Right Things + More Wrong Things = Bad thing.

Much as I hate to belabor the obvious, I think that being able to sum up EQ2 as "it's fun if you can group with friends regularly" is actually pretty daming praise.  I wanted to try eq2, but I know that it would be a short lived experiement exactly for this reason.

ANY mmorpg can be fun if you group with friends regularly, play mechanics be damned.  It's the ones that are also fun if you group with strangers or play by yourself that will set the bar.  A game that primarily aims for people with regular play groups is a further niche of a niche and is inherently self-limiting in appeal.

Xilren

That is a good point, Xil. My guild actually had some people playing Horizons and enjoying it - because they played together. I think the market has evolved so that impediments to casual grouping are much more deleterious than they used to be since there are decent alternatives now. If a game is best whenm grouped, then it needs:

1) instant teleporting of some kind to ease group gathering
2) cross class abilites so that no one particular build is "required" for effeciency.

CoH has these two things, but pickup grouping could still be difficult so the list is clearly incomplete.

Excellent points.  In WoW if you have a warlock + 2 people you can summon - beyond the current "zone" whereas in CoH summon friend is limited to the current zone.  Clearly, EQ2 lacks this feature.

Ok, I got to lvl 16 as a Sorcerer. Im totally bored with EQ2 already. It really started to feel very generic to me. The best way I could describe my feelings for EQ2 is a line from Heamish's review of Horizons.

"I looked around for the sign pointing to "Fun" but I just couldnt find it"

That was quick.

Once I decide some thing isnt fun any more. I stop trying to make it some thing its not, and accept its time to move on.

Get banned for shits and giggles.  Page a GM just to call him a cockmonkey.

Just wondering, but is there anything for a 27 brigand to do in this game, or would I still be stuck in Varsoons for the forseeable future?

Also, I heard they finally nerfed the trick to get your gather resource quest count up through trading resource units if you already had enough of whatever the NPC asked for.

Splitpaw is pretty cool. A lot of instanced dungeons for both groups and solo. The Harclaves instance is definately worth doing at least once. Groups will be based on your server but on Grobb there is usually at least 2-3 people trying to form groups at various level ranges.

You're also high enough level to move into Enchanted Lands and Zek. There's also a couple of instanced dungeons off of Thundering Steppes that are geared towared solo play. You're also probably high enough to start the Bloodline Chronicles series of dungeons if you can find a group. Probably need more levels to try it solo. I think I did the Burial Grounds solo at 32. Not to mention that Thundering Steppes higher end mobs (giants & skindancer gnolls) would still be challenging. I'm sure there's probably also mobs and a dungeon or two off of Nek or Commonlands but I haven't really explored those zones much.