f13.net

Recently at SOE Fan Faire EQ2 devs announced the end of the "an expansion pack every 6 months, no matter if it's finished or not" era.

Today websites for the new Expansion Pack (Echoes of Faydwer, out for Christmas holiday, I guess) and the new Adventure Pack (Fallen Dynasty, out soon...).

The Adventure pack sounds promising, especially at the usual low price of 7.99, but the Expansion features really shine if you ask me.
A new playable race (the Fae), a new starting city (the treetop city of Kelethin), new upgrade system for crafted weapons making them customized and unique, player cloaks, armour sets (Diablo and WoW style), expanded achievements trees (Talents) for all classes, new PvP features (?), a brand new belief system based (I guess) on the origianl eq1 one with deity influencing your conning and questing capabilities, new mounts, cloaks, and a grand total of 20 new zones WITHOUT raising the level cap (stuck at 70).

Personally, I really like EQ2 so I am looking forward to these 2 expansions to my favourite diku mmo. It took them almost 2 years, but I think now they are on the right track.
Most of these are not ground breaking and already seen in lots of MMO before, but to me they are the finishing touches to the most complete old style level based mmorpg out there, and I wonder if this would be able to complete the EQ2 comeback some of us talked about in the "comeback" topic.

Links: 

Echoes of Faydwer  (http://everquest2.station.sony.com/expansions/echoesoffaydwer/) - Expansion pack out in December 2006.

Fallen Dynasty  (http://everquest2.station.sony.com/adventures/fallendynasty/) - Adventure Pack out in june 2006


--
the Falconeer

best comeback ≠ most improved

/em Bashes head into keyboard

Stop! Save the keyboard!  :-D
I used "comeback" for a reason.
Could it be able to really buy people back?

Most where driven away by a "heavy graphic engine" performing sub par.
In January 2007 the game will be back on store shelves, reviews could be good and the average PCs will be faster than now (not to mention launch date back in november 2004), so people trying the trial will get a totally different first impression from the game (and a new starting city!).

I am really wondering if EQ2 could score an economic comeback in the near future.
No doubt it is one of the most improved, if not the best.

--
the Falconeer

I have a bridge to sell you.

Not sure. Do you think it would look nice close to the Colosseo I bought last month? :)
As I said, I think diku-wise EQ2 is the best and I am happy about the new proposed features, while I wasn't back in the days when I read the Desert of Flames and Kingdom of Sky ones.

--
the Falconeer

You two know eachother, don't you?

Nope.
Although I read his thing sometimes.

--
the Falconeer

Best to wait a few months after the expansion comes out.  You'll be able to see how well it was implemented, it'll be cheaper on the shelf, bundled with the rest of the game, and some of the bugs will have been crushed.

Basically the standard MMOG disincentives to buy early, with an extra dose of SOE caution. 

Right.
By the way, a dev just stated the expansion will be out mid-november.
What about the Burning Crusade?

--
the Falconeer

Double darning post.

/em Bashes head into keyboard

For whatever reason, it appears to very, very hard to overcome initial impressions in the genre.  I said this during EQ2's beta, and I'll say it again now (because there is nothing I enjoy listening to more than my own voice): EQ2 should have released about 6-12 months after WoW.  By racing to beat WoW and putting out a shit game they left a bad taste in many mouths and got a lot of negative PR.  Basically, EQ2 was a joke.  Even when a lot of people began getting burned out on WoW and running low on content near the end of its first year, there was no mass movement to EQ2, because EQ2 was still seen as a joke game compared to WoW.  Despite the fact that EQ2 is now a pretty decent game (by accounts here and elsewhere) it just can't shake the fact that it sucked on release day and during open beta.

If they had waited until some people were starting to run out of things to do in WoW and EQ2 was in decent shape, I think they would have done a lot better than they are doing right now.  They certainly wouldn't be anywhere near WoW's numbers, but maybe they could have pulled off 10% or so of that figure.

The removal of the tiered class structure tempted me.  I reinstalled the Trial and gave it another shot.  It was nice to log on and be an assassin or a shadowknight right up front, but in the end the graphics were still enough to kill it for me. 

The Faydwer expansion looks pretty damn nice. Hopefully I'll have some MMOG time again in the fall and I can resub and check it out. The web site for the expansion, however, is garbage.

I'm predicting 10 million.

They need to launch this expansion way before Burning Crusade. Not a few weeks before like EQ2 was to WoW, but a few months. If they don't, they'll run the risk they did last time, with probably the same result. Even with losing many an account, WoW still grows. Can you imagine the giant sucking sound coming from California when Burning Crusade compels people to re-up? I agree with Arthuer_Parker's prediction of 10mil.

Most games have continued to grow after launch though, with CoH being a glaring exception. The probem with EQ2 is one of triple jeopardy:

• The game itself wasn't as fun at launch as it is now.
• As if that weren't bad enough, WoW (and later: GW), highlighted and put to almost exact definition everything that was wrong with EQ2 for the casual player.
• SOE is not a beloved company among gamers. It's not even that Blizzard is. It's that SOE has at one point or another pissed off the most vocal members of this genre for as long as this genre had its catchy acronym. And it still happens. While it's wrong and silly to blame an EQ2 member for the antics of SWG or MxO members, it happens anyway.

Getting over that image problem is much harder than making EQ2 a better game. But it's absolutely critical they do so. Posting in FoH forums isn't going to do that. They need to make all of their games actually better, rather than the string of promises we keep seeing for some of them. And they need to do so in clear ways that others have defined for them (ie, without WoW defining what's good for casuals, this genre would not have grown in the U.S. as it had).

Maybe it's too late. Maybe they just need to shed the "SOE" name and treat their divisions as different entities. Like, nobody blames NC Soft for nerfs in CoH. Empower the indentities of the individual divisions and just use "SOE" when talking to the non-interested money folks.

It's written on the press release (http://eq2players.station.sony.com/news_archive.vm?id=771&section=News&month=current).

November 14.

Actually, even now, I think the biggest thing holding EQ2 back isn't the bad impression from release (though that certainly hurts), it's that it has the Everquest name. EQ has gotten a brand reputation as a grindy, addicting game that takes forever to get anything done, that requires a bazillion people, has terrible CS, etc. Bascially, people who wouldn't play EQ because of word-of-mouth won't play EQ2 because to them, it'll just be the same game, only with shinier shiney.

It's paying for the sins of the father as much as for its own sins.

I was one of a bunch of people here who resubbed to Everquest 2 based on all the talk about improvement. I didn't last long, nor did most of the other folks.

It's not much different than it was at launch. There is no comeback. This game may maintain sub levels in a comfortable niche, but that's about it.

It doesn't matter.  EQ2 will put out this expansion in November and maybe gain some subs, while WoW will wait until half-past forever to release theirs, then blow past ten million subscriptions and walk over to SOE HQ to piss in Smedley's face.

WUA is right. Sitting around waiting to see what Blizzard is gonna do is just stupid. SOE and everyone else needs to just go on with their day and pretend Blizzard doesn't exist.

This works better when you picture Adam West (the family guy version) sitting at his desk as CEO of SOE with his hands over his ears going "I can't hear youuuuuuuuuu."

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/93/Mayor_adam_west.png)

Eq2 just needs to do their own thing and not worry about blizzard. Hell if this comes out in november it will be 3 full expansions out probably before blizzard can even get one to limp to market.

The change to how characters are done made the low end game SO much more interesting. I started playing again and holy god my dirge who used to be pretty squishy in battle is a hard hitting lil  mofo now.

kaid

Anyone seen that movie The Great White Hype?  As far as expansions go, EQ2 is Conklin while WoW is Roper.  EQ2 might look good and train really hard, while WoW sits around smoking cigarettes and getting fat, but in the end EQ2 is still going to get knocked the fuck out as soon as WoW gets off it's fat ass and decides to throw a punch.

I bet Smedly there would do anything to be able to limp to a market of 6+ million. Well, except turn out quality product. He fucking has his pride, okay?

Limp?  Are you suggesting that the SOE method is analagous to some kind of track star?  I could push a blind retard in a wheelchair down a steep hill into a bus and it would be fast, but I wouldn't want to see the results.

Thank you.  And I bet you didn't need an MBA for that.

Lol thats the only good analogy ive read anywhere in a very long time.

Totally agree :)
Right on target. My bad to bring in the WoW name in a topic where "comeback" would just mean get some subscribers (and a bit of reputation) back.
The analogy is simply perfect, and again EQ2's comeback shouldn't in any way measured using WoW figures.
"Ain't the same ballpark, ain't the same league, ain't even the same fuckin' sport."

--
the Falconeer

It's an EQ2 thread, WoW has to be mentioned on the first page, it's a rule.

Because WoW does everything Everquest has EVER done, better. Without an expansion.

WRONG. It does not patch better. It does not have better guild support. Last but not least, the classes in WoW sound 10x more fruity than the classes in EQ2.

Eh i dont know about fruity.  At least WoW doesn't have any kind of bard, the fruity staple of fantasy games.  Edit: ok i looked it up, its actually "troubador", which is much much worse.

My bard would kick your ass in SB.

The dynasty thing threatens to have fricking ninjas, and is limited to levels 55+.

Yes. Ninjas.  :roll:

These guys are cool; and by cool, I mean totally sweet.

Aren't "the Fae" acutally a fairy race? So to make it even worse you could be a fairy troubador.

Warrior, Mage, Shaman, Paladin, Warlock, Priest, Rogue, Hunter, Druid (bold for overlap). Compared with EQ2 attack-of-the-thesaurus class naming, it seems pretty equal.  If anything, WoW's class names are a bit muted and bland.  Christopher Lowell it is not. 

Patching and guild support (tools) are not something I'd choose one game over the other for. Those aren't deal breakers I'd imagine for a great majority of people, unlike releasing a game that punishes solo gameplay (yes, I know it's gotten better). 

EQ2 probably has gotten to the point that I'd enjoy playing it.  But why? If I want to get my DIKU on, I already have a good place to do that.  :|  And a place where I won't need to spend a bunch of cash on expansions.  :|

If KoS didn't bring in more people, I don't see why this would. The art in KoS is quite good and the solo quest lines are superb.

The last but not least thing was something of a joke.

I also didn't mention player housing - which is a big thing for me. EQ2 has 100% more virtual world than WoW. That's a huge win for me, and not many other people.

There are Druids and Shamen in EQ2 also...

Yah, I figured.. People do that on the WoW forums a lot; I didn't expect to see that kind of crap here :) You'll always get a mention of Astral Recall being overpowered in any nerf shaman post to throw the fanbois into a fit.

I haven't liked player housing since UO/SWG.  Instanced virtual appartments really do jack shit for me.

Of course, virtual ghettos like in UO and SW:G are game breakers.

Instanced apartments are the difference between a shit sandwich, and a shit sandwich with ketchup.  Although I'd probably settle for a building existing inside it's own larger instance.  Give me something I can design creatively and have people look at from the outside, not just a box to push furniture around in.


And the sandwich with ketchup has 100% more non-shit content than the one without, but that doesn't mean I want to eat it.  Honestly, if I want me some "virtual world" I'll...  Well I sure as hell won't look to either EQ2 or WoW.

WoW is a better EQ1.

EQ2 is a better WoW.

It's just that nobody gives a shit and plays WoW instead. Suck it up and deal.

Frankly after seeing the sprawling ghettos of swg and uo I just don't think to many mmrpg will go with non instanced player housing.

I think DAOC so far has done housing about as good as possible. The houses are useful its not to much of a ghetto and they are in their own instance housing area so if it offends you just don't go there.

kaid

Yeah, but he'd look like a fucking pansy doing it. I've never seen a gayer outfit than the high-level bard armor in SB.

Personally, i think AC1 did the best housing i have ever encountred.  There were "villiages" of normal small and mid sized houses (1 or 2 room houses with basements) for people to show off their stuff on the walls / lawn / whatever.  There were scattered large houses in smaller clumps (5 or 6 rooms), and there were widely scattered mansions (10+ rooms, including portals to private meeting areas) which were usually snapped up as guildhouses.

To allow housing for everyone, without cluttering the landscape with eyesore ghettoes, they implimented the "Appartments", which were warrens of 1 room houses much like a normal appartment building, except in their own dungeons, hidden out of the way (about as close to "instancing" as you could get")

Except that EQ2's graphics make me physically ill.  They're flat out amateurish.  A lot of people don't like WoW's style (I do, but hey, tastes are subjective) but you do have to admit that at least there's some style to be had in it.  EQ2 is completely without soul, and that's just something I can't ignore.

Horizons had the best design for housing. It was AC1s system, with tons more customizability, cleanliness and polish.

Unfortunately that polish was applied by the hands of retards and turned out to be total crap.

But, IN THEORY it was the best housing system.

(http://nija.dyndns.org/eq2_in_one_picture.jpg)

WoW >

I JUST played EQ2. I know this. Don't make me go to the dirge forum and grab some UI screenshots from the high level guys.

5-6 12 button hotkey bars jam packed with the exact same icons and every single one is needed. It's not a good game.

Since WoW's UI requires at least three different mods to make playing it even marginally passable, I wouldn't hold WoW to any level of divine either. The UI, like EQ2's, is fine for the rank and file newb who'll be bored before maximizing efficiency is an absolute requirement anyway. But anyone serious about playing is going to be customizing forever, and finding programs to make up for whatever lacks.

EQ2 is much more customizable than WoW, almost incomparably so. But the end product just isn't as pretty. Uninspired art can suck the life out of any otherwise engaging experience.

Min-maxing to that degree is stupid.  I play with one mod as a requirement, CT raid, and that's simply because the guild requires it.  I'd be fine using WoW's own raid interface for healing these days.   Saying 2-3 are required is a fallacy, just say you prefer EQ2 D, you're getting silly.

Agreed.

Their latest expansion - plane of sky - supposedly addresses some of these graphical issues and livens things up a bit.  BUT IN TRUE EQ STYLE, OF COURSE THE CHANGES ONLY APPLY TO THE LATEST ZONE ADDED TO GAME.

Having recently played both, and having tried (http://lazydilettante.blogspot.com/2006/03/18-months-later-wow-vs-eq2-part-one.html) desperately (http://lazydilettante.blogspot.com/2006/03/18-months-later-wow-vs-eq2-part-uh.html) to come up with a defining difference between the two, I came up fairly empty actually.

The fact is, to me, WoW is super boring.  I've tried, so hard, because the people I've been MMOG-ing with since '99 are total crack heads for WoW, and even their company just doesn't help.  Wish I had the talent to put it into words.

I've healed 99% of the available raid content in WoW using nothing more than CTRaid. If I was lazy and wanted one-button, half awake easy-mode would go out and get crap like benecast or decursive (if I was still playing that is). None of that crap is remotely necessary to even be in the top .1% bleeding edge guilds. People are just lazy.

Let's just get this one thing out of the way right now: I played WoW for a solid year and barely logged three cumulative months into EQ2.  I'll probably be back to WoW when BC comes out, but otherwise it's a merely a conversation point to me. Just because I am not waiting for my 0.1% chance at some BWL drop doesn't mean I'm a SOE stooge.

Now, on the UI, if you're doing only one thing (ie, Raiding), yea, you can get by with CT Raid. Just like anyone who plays very casually would be fine with the basic UI.

But what about questing? You were probably done with your questing by the time Blizzard got around to doing what things like MonkeyBar did so frigging long ago. Maybe you suffered the quest UI nobly, or used Monkey or it's ilk. And what about the commerce side? Things like Auctioneer, Enchantrix? Those aren't a requirement to people who play that segment the game? And for normal play, you only ever had one hotbutton bar up until Blizzard got around to adding more of those too, something the CT folks had forever?

It's not min-maxxing. It's improving the UI to get a better play experience. Old discussion, new game.

My choice would be about static houses (farms, outposts, villages, cities, apartments etc..) everywhere in the world. Where the world and the buildings are really used and populated by players. And not just backdrops.

The point is: real houses, not portals to instances. Without the pop-up of shantytowns as in UO or SWG.

Take EQ2, make it so once an house slot is bought noone else can get it as another instance of it (which is lame), then make it persistent in the environment (open the door, go in).

I like what EQ2 does, I like that I can walk around a town and target a door to go to that house. But I don't like that if I buy that house someone else can come and buy another instance of it. It kind of removes the value of existing and owning a part of that virual world.

I'd add: at least WoW's interface doesn't lag the game of another 10-20%.

Really, EQ2 UI is another major lagging factor added to the already poor engine.

WoW's UI not only is well designed, imho, but it has also a really good technology behind. Both in power and performance.

Antonica
Antonica2
Antonica4

It kills me.

This is pretty much exactly what AC1 did, just without living quarters on the "city" scale, and appartments werent buildings, but were connected to a portal.  The player housing areas were deliberately placed by the devs in specific locations. The only real reason the Appartments were added was because they couldnt feasably add their little villiages / outposts in great enough quantity to assure everyone an available house without covering the whole place in housing.

 When a house was purchased, that was it.  if someone else wanted it, they had to either buy it from its existing owner, or hope that owner eventually defaulted on the upkeep payments.

I agree AC1's approach was pretty damned good. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you bought a deed, found an open anchor that would take the size of that house, and plopped it down right?

The only problem with the UO and SWG approach is that there were no control mechanisms at all (aside from the 13 Castles per facet thing in UO). I understand the reasoning behind the lack of controls, but I also think what was learned in UO should have very much been applied in SWG. Urban blight will come because players don't typically coordinate on the level of civic engineering. Even most Player Cities had pockets of organized thought, with the rest being a mess.

As a result of the chaos wrought upon the UO landscape (and then SWG later), we get overly contrived control mechanisms. But there's ways to give players their choices without screwing up the landscape. And that landscape includes the static and formula-based adventure content. This is simple real world zoning here, some thought given to what can go where by civic leaders.

Anotnica 2 is not so nice, I agree.
But it's SOE answer to Blizzard's:
"You are 543 in queue - Estimated time is 241 minutes"

Now that actually killed my subscription.

EDIT: not SOE "answer". Just a different approach to overpopulation issue.

--
the Falconeer

No, in AC1 you had to get  drop from a mob called "Writ of <something, refuge maybe?>".  Then along with a variety of other random drop items (quantity dependent on the size of house) and some cash, you found a house that was empty and paid up.  It was then yours for a month, at which point you had to add cash to keep it yours.

That ensured that you didnt just login to refresh the house, you had to make/keep some cash around.  There were also visual indications when the house was about to go on the market, so you could scout yourself out a house ahead of time and camp it.

I personally think that is a great model.

Regarding UIs - after Blizzard stole some ideas improved the UI with more on-screen bars, I think the need for mods has been close to zero.  I personally used to use Auctioneer, but at the rate I AH things (the typical rate I'd think, I'm not a powerseller), I can look up current prices just as easily at auction time.  The only mod I regularly use is CTRaid and Scrolling Combat Text.  I would not be surprised if something like SCT is eventually official-UI'd.  But otherwise, I agree that you really don't need that much any more.

I only briefly visited AC after housing, but it seemed to make the entire world dead.  The houses were these suburban/exurban gated communities far away from the lifeless, empty towns and travel routes.  Most of these little housing enclaves seemed to be guild only, which made me wonder how people met people outside their guild anymore.  Or how newbs met anyone at all.

UO and SWG were far from perfect, but I believe a more free-form model could work with better zoning and maintenance mechanics.   I'll say no thanks to AC's strip-mall model.

I think SoE's approach to the overpopulation issue was not to sell very many games.  I don't think the queue is to prevent overcrowding in the sense of not enough places to hunt (since most of the best places in WoW are instanced too) but to prevent too many people on the server, which lags everyone to hell.

Hey.
I know they had to face two different kind of issues, but still the zone instancing (Antonica 2, Qeynos 2) was meant to switch people on different hardware server (thus preventing lag, for all I know. In fact when lag do appear in EQ2 it's usually a zone-wide issue, not worldserver-wide).
I don't know about WoW's net architecture, but if they could "spread" players that actually play on the same world-server, addressing them to different instance-server, that would be as ugly as Antonica 2 but probably a little less cluttered.
In fact the solution is so simple that I like to think it's impractical for some reason. I just would like to know this reason :)

Actually, WoW queues are still a mistery to me considering the sheer amount of money and resource they should have gathered in the last 18 months. I enjoyed the game for a while, but as I said Queue was the hardest solo mob I ever met. A real subscription killer

--
the Falconeer

I don't disagree with your assertions, but I do place the blame on those problems within SWG player cities on the devs.  28 months solid i watched the politician correspondents get blowjobs instead of answers from the devs on a pile of bugs and disjointed problems with player cities.  Not to mention, if they truly gave a shit about archiving old player items they should have perfected offline storage when a subsciption expired.  The implementation of player cities was a huge community builder for guilds.  Too bad they couldn't have taken the time to set controls that assisted zoning and active game maintenance.

You may be right Falcon.  On the "I can't believe they haven't fixed it" issue, they have been switching old servers onto some fancy new hardware that increases population caps and reduces lag by a lot (they say even Mal'Goonis is lag free now).  Of course, this process is proceeding TheBlizzardWay (i.e. slow as hell).

With all the money they should have I think they could have hired enough people to develop WoW2 in the last 18 months.
When I try to figure how can they be so slow, I keep thinking they are all away, on a tropical isle, too busy spending all those money.

--
the Falconeer

"Welcome to Jamiaca, Have a Nice Day"  ?

ROFL!!!!!!!!!

I hope I am not the only one who understood that. Classic.

You are not.  One day I'll buy Ironwood a pint.

I'll buy him one too. But for his avatar. THAT's a classic :)

http://www.autographcity.co.uk/catalog/images/zod.JPG

You don't like my avatar?  Snubbed by the Academy, he was.

I agree it was an issue at the development level, but not that it had anything to do with Politicians. The urban blight had already spread, and was fairly well entrenched, with people having a year's worth of maintenance by the time the Player Cities launched. A lot can happen in six months :)

The issue should have been identified and resolved way early in Alpha. Uncontrolled player building will result in teh uglee. That's axiom, long established from years prior to that.

Quick point about EQ2 graphics.

Everyone complaining about them almost always uses images of or examples in the Qeynos area.

Qeynos & Antonica looks shit in EQ2, it's unfortunate that this is the newbie area, but that's life.

Everywhere else looks slightly better than WoW, and the animation looks a gazillion times better than WoW everywhere.

That is all.

Actually, I like the landscapes and scenery in EQ2. It's the player models that suck ass.

For you.

For others of us, we hate the blandness of EQ2. Yeah great, its very realistic. It boring as fuck. I love WoWs graphics, always have enjoyed the cartoonie feel of Blizzard games. I enjoyed some of the quality of the EQ2 graphics, but the player models where so wierd, and the player Armor and weapons was so boring. Hell, the very best high end Assassin armor just looked like you found a roll of tinfoil and wrapped yourself in it. Horrible.

So, some people like real, some like styalized. For each their own. I would take WoW graphics over EQ2 graphics any and every day of the week.

I've never been to Qeynos, in my trial, I started on the Ebil side, so I saw Freeport, which in contrast to the desert city of EQ1 simply looked like a giant grey city that had a giant bowl of brown ink and ash poured over every surface. People told me that Qeynos was much nice looking. I only got as far as the crossroads cam in the commons, but by then I was thouroughly uninterested in continuing.

WoW's graphics are kind of cartoony, but I'd also call them a kind of hyper-realistic (which is different to photorealistic). Maybe it's because of my video card, but I find it to be almost like a watercolour painting. It's the kind of world that Secret of Mana for SNES was set in, only cranked way up. I'm actually surprised that Mr Japanophile prefers the bland realism of EQ2 over the look of WoW.

And yeah, the lighting effects in EQ combined with the richness of the world's palette combine to give you the "magic moment" on a constant basis. I'm talking about the way the light gets in RL sometimes near sunset.

Some details about Echoes of Faydwer from IGN (http://pc.ign.com/articles/707/707870p1.html)

I will say again: I would still be playing EQ2 is the character animations or... something about the graphics didn't literally make me puke. Especially the frogs. I made one and could only play for about an hour before I had to stop.

I actually caved and bought KoS (comes with the basic game, $29.99).  And as I play it I find that I don't mind the graphics as much - Qeynos is much nicer than the newb isle IMO.  I actually play a frog and I like it. 

I like that they are stealing the armor set thing from WoW. That always sounded cool to me. That said I haven't set foot in EQ2 since I re-started Planetside last month. I guess I needed a change.

Whatever happened to the Korean models they were going to slot in?  Yeah, they were also not great, but they were a lesser evil than what's currently in play.

It's there. In options you can choose to have male/female models of X race replaced by the alternate ones. For instance, most people turn on the KAWAII ANIMU DARK ELF FEMALES. In char creation you create your character first in the classic design, and then at the screen where you enter the game there's a box that says "alternate appearance" - if you click that it brings up the customize character stuff again but this time with the Korean model/different textures.

I'm not sure if you filled out that stuff, that you'd change how you look for good. I never bothered with it, as the classic design stuff was good enough for me.