f13.net

So, I have been trying out a bunch of different MMOs lately.  I was looking at the options available to me for Everquest II and it seemed really confusing since they seem to be doing something unique (but not better) to the rest of the industry.  From what I can tell there are two separate trials, each which are separate experiences.  When I was reading through them I got the impression they were like the original tutorial for Everquest, where you would play in this offline, single player experience that masked how conditions were on the real servers, except it looks like it's now like Star Wars: Galaxies in that you're playing in this online, instanced experience that masks how conditions are on the real servers.

Is there some free trial that takes place in the game environment I'm missing? For instance, I saw the difference in Star Wars: Galaxies when they isolated (though temporarily, but enough to get me to stop playing) the trial accounts to the tutorial station.  I found that to be a horrible practice.

What's wrong with having a trial take place in the game world? Show me how things are actually going to be.  Put in the appropriate fail-safes spammers aren't taking advantage of them.  Honestly I'm more concerned about playing your game.  Galaxies took some appropriate measures (after taking inappropriate ones) as well as WoW to make Trial Accounts more for customers playing the game then advertisers using it as a free advertisement channel.  Aside from those concerns, I imagine Everquest II takes up a significant amount of hard drive space that would make it difficult to download, thus preventing a full trial.

Slightly better but pretty bad was Lineage II's "Fileplanet Subscribers get a free trial." Wonderful.  Not only is the client not hosted on your network, but you're keeping a free trial out of the public domain so people can have to go through backwards channels to try your game.

What you wrote confused me. Play the Fae is in the real world but you're just capped at level 10 or 15 and can't do a few things.

And you have to play the Fae, right?  If "Play the Fae" is a real trial, they really need to name it something clear, like, "Everquest II Trial".

I think that maybe you are just really, really stupid.

Play the Fae (http://everquest2.station.sony.com/en/promotions/playthefae/) is a trial to, get this, play the Fae.

If you want the regular Everquest II trial go download the one called "Everquest II trial". (http://www.trialoftheisle.com/)

Yes, you do have to play as the Fae, but as Murgos pointed out that isn't the only trial. The other trial just puts you on the newbie island and lets you mess around with that. It's not much, but there are other players, quests, collections..etc. Everything you'd get from the outside world as it were.

You don't have to play the Fae.  You DO have to make at least one Fae/ Evil Fae character and log them in.  After that you don't have to do diddly with them, and can make any race.  I did my trial as a Half-Elf, for example.

To illustrate a point:

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/burningcrusade/trial/index.html?referrer=WORLDOFWARCRAFT
http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/
http://www.tryrfonline.com/landing.php
https://secure.eve-online.com/ft/?aid=102321&nogreet=1
https://secure.plaync.com/cgi-bin/free_trial.pl?partner=10

All of these trial programs take you directly into the game.  There are no separate game environments a player would occupy.  You do not have character restrictions or have to engage in special steps to enter the main game world.  There is only one trial (with the exception of WoW, but WoW is *explicit* about what the two trials represent and the type of audience they are for), and they do not have silly code names.  All of them are "Try our X-day Free Trial!", can't get any clearer than that.  Launching this game is exactly as if you bought the game and launched it for the first time.  Galaxies has exceptions to some of these, but it is an SOE product, so similarities exist between it and EQ2's design, if I understand EQ2's trial accounts correctly.

This isn't really meant to grief; it's to point out an area of improvement for EQ2's trial program.  They can simplify the process, get people into the game faster, ditch the silly code names.  But I can understand the approach of wanting to keep trial accounts out of the main player pool because of how it can be taken advantage of.  But I got a bad taste in my mouth when I tried to make heads or tails of what it was I was downloading.

SWG puts you back into the game now?  I thought trial players were still trapped in the Station.

Either they just fixed it or they will fix it.  I got into my trial period literally the day before they made that change and was able to run around a bit on Tatooine.  Seeing the change they made and being forced back to Tarsis Station was an insult and I stopped playing.

You're right... Because to me at least, hearing the word trial, I think "Access to the entire game with no restrictions." I mean when they say "Play the Fae" what do they mean, that I play the Fae or something? What do they expect, that I have a basic grasp of the English language or something?



......


Am I supposed to put that in green for the sarcasm impaired?

 :-o

The WoW trial is more limited than the EQ2 one as an effort to combat spammers.
The SWG one won't even let you off the station anymore, and I don't forsee that changing any time soon - again thank the spammers.
EvE doesn't need to limit you, because if you spam someone will just blow the fuck out of you in a disposable T1 frigate, since all you'll have is a Noobship.
AA won't limit you because.. well who the fuck cares, they're closing down in a month.
RFonline I can't speak about, but hey it's a KRPG. RMT is probably company-sponsored so spammers avoid it.

As mentioned, the 'play the fae' puts you IN the gameworld and you can make a character of any race/ class after you create the one fae character.  I don't know for certain if you're limited on where you can start, however, as I picked it up only so I could check-out the Good Fae area, and then another trial for Neriak.   I didn't want to start in the other horrible, crappy original EQ2 zones.  :-D

Granted, grammatical error, but please take the sand out of your vagina.  Why would a new character give two shits about playing a Fae? What would a new player know about a Fae anyway? If someone hasn't played your game at all before, why are you going to make the process of trying your game a complicated one by having different flavors of a trial?  You guys must play the game because the things I'm pointing out seem so obvious to you but aren't clear to someone who has never played the game before.

Take a *very close look* at the first link I provided for World of Warcraft's trial.  Right there in the ad, "Are you a new player?" or "Are you a former or current player?".  It is *that* simple.  Once you select the trial page for WoW (not BC), there aren't any fancy flash advertisements to get to the trial.  Just a download link.


If you can't at the very least acknowledge that there is room for improvement in their Trial program, then provide a good counter-point instead of going "Bluh? Yarg! OP is stupid!".

But they all start from a very basic premise: start the trial like you were playing the game for real.

If Play the Fae is like that, then OK, but what I'm reading is you're limited in the character you can choose and it makes it sound like some separate experience from the game world.

"sand in your vagina" is one of the top ten all time best euphemisms.

Here's a bright idea.  PLAY IT.  It will be very clear to you then.

Play the Fae is the FULL ENTIRE GAME WORLD on a 7 day free trial where the EQ2 team has asked that first you play a Fae because they want you to experience their newest content not the 3 year old content.  Once you have created a Fae you may then play the entire game, every single nuance available, with any character you want from any starting location.

That's all.  It's not some conspiracy to get you to go fuck yourself.

Well there's clear philosophical differences that I'm going to give up on attempting to expose.

Or, possibly, you are just really, really stupid.

And you seem to like to reinforce the point.  That's, what, three posts calling me an idiot now?

We could all chime in and call you a moron if it'll make the point more evident. EQ2 has one of the better newbie experiences. The Trial on the Isle was the very best new user experience EVAR, though it's not quite as good now that they've changed it.
And hilariously ironic in this case.

Is that what you're all in a bunch about? That seems more convoluted than the EQ2 trial(s) that ANYONE can play at ANY time. What the fuck? EQ2 gives you two choices that anyone can use and WoW makes you take a fucking interview first before choosing and EQ2 needs improvement?

Are you really so daft that you downloaded a trial called Play the Fae and when you got to the character select everything was grayed out except for a race called Fae and one called Arasai (that looked the same) and you couldn't figure out what to do? Did you really stop and think, "Hmmm... I downloaded an expansion called "Play the Fae" but the only race I can play is Fae... I don't get it! I give up!"

Like I said, I've given up.  I'm instead passing my time laughing at your guy's rebuttals and shaking my head.

The only problem I had with the EQ2 Newbie Island was that they had not managed to squish all of the bugs in that insular, self-contained area and that pretty much tainted my opinion of the game from that point forward.

This thread made my day :heart:

No its not.  I played Play the Fae about 6-8 weeks ago - you can only choose a Fae as a race, and you can't leave the Greater Feydark area.  I wanted to go check out the updated Butcherblock Mountains and the Chessboard - but it wouldn't let you zone out of GFay.  So while you are in a real server with real people etc, you are constrained in your race and zone choices.  Of course, that also means the download isn't about 20 Gigs or whatever a full EQ2 install is these days...

Once you have created a fae you can play any race you want.  IT"S CALLED "PLAY THE FAE"!  There is a whole other trial if you want to do the normal newb starting areas.

Dunno about zoning out of GFay, I never tried it.  But the point was that it is the REAL game world.  The newbie isles are really where newbies start for Freeport or Qeynos and The Fae newbie areas are really where they start in the full game.  You may be level limited and limited to a subset of the available content but.  But, um, yah?

I did it to try out the evil fae.  I was able to zone into Neriak, but didn't try to go anywhere else as you're capped at level 10.

You really wouldn't want to travel around much if you're capped at ten. You'd lose a bunch of AA levels.

I crown Lorekeep King of Unintentional Irony.

Hey! I get to rule something!  :-D

This thread has prompted me to try the Play the Fae, after trying the original trial way back when the game came out. Its much improved. The graphics in the new zone are more to my taste. That may be because my computer is now much more powerful, so I don’t have to run on the lowers settings.

I’m liking the quest writing in the new zone, some nice touches. There does seem a ton of stuff to do, so I am tempted to subscribe for a bit. Maybe I have been infected by that other thread, but there does seem way too much button pushing. They seem to have “speeded up” combat by making you push the same button three times instead of once. That says “carpal tunnel” to me more than “fun”.

Anyone here played a troubadour? Seems like people complain it doesn’t include enough button pushing, so it might suit me.

Full install is under 10. I recall it being around 7-8 Gigs.

Don't play any of the melee classes if you don't like button pushing. Any of the "rogue" classes (Swash, Assassin, Brigand, etc...) all usually chain together 6-7 different combat arts per solo fight. I've never played dirge or troub but I imagine they will be mostly the same. Fighter classes are similar in style but you're chaining taunts and combat arts instead of just pure combat arts.

For least button mashing a Inquisitor or Templar is probably the best choice. You'll mostly auto-attack, heal yourself and throw an occiasonal damage spell.

Alternately, a Necro or Conjuror mainly relies on their pet. So you can just send in the pet add a DoT or two and you're done.

But any way you look at it to be really effective with a class takes pushing a number of buttons during a solo fight to really see the full potential.

Thanks for the feedback. Yep, pet classes do suit my style. But I have played them so often in MMORPGs that I am looking to branch out a bit. I'll give the game a try and see what happens.

You could try a wizard or warlock. They usually only take a few casts to kill something. I think Warlock is probably the better bet as they have longer casting time but more powerful spells it seems.

Or even Ranger might not be a bad solo choice if you don't mind a little bow kiting. They do significant auto-attack damage with just the bow. Or if you duo then you can easily stay at range.

I've enjoyed playing my brigand.  To get the most out of the class you need to move around a lot while chaining stuns and positionals.  Unfortunately, it's not terribly solo friendly unless you are willing to do many missions when they green out.  Numbers are the greatest enemy.

Just curious, what level is your brigand at?  The brigand I started was very effective as a soloer for a while and then dropped ridiculously around 20ish.  The same was true for the assassin - the 20's were very painful.  Late 30's though the assassin picked up big time and is now a very competent soloer, I was killing yellow ^'s bull crocs in Oasis of Mar with pretty much no downtime which meant I was soloing yellow con quests.

Brigand AA's seem tailor made for a strong soloer, I would think.  The sword and board line gets big defense and damage buffs (wis?) and the int line with it's 1 min 100% feign death seem pretty ideal.

I've ditched the brigand for the moment but I would go back if he was going to be a noticeably better soloer than the assassin with a little work.

I think I made it to the upper 40's on my brigand.  I had to farm gear and money with other toons to equip it and was eventually able to kill blue ^^^ solo.  Funny thing is that a group of 6 evens would wipe me.  Perhaps it was more a playstyle problem on my end than the class itself.

You know I'd really love to, as a nostalgic EQ player, explore the new environments based on the pre-existing EQ1 locales but not really have to actually fight any of the mobs or deal with all the crap that comes with modern diku exploration.

I've got an 18 Brigand and also a 70 Swash. Both play very similar but the Swash has one major advantage. The ambush attack from stealth for the Swash has a 3 second stun attached. That means when you can open from stealth you can stun lock a mob for the full 6-8 seconds you need to kill most solo mobs. The Brigand had the cheap shot stun and I think one other but you still ended up taking a shot or two.

Still a bit early to compare though.

One thing to keep an eye out for though is level appropriate mastercrafted poisons. I think I was able to find the level 10 mastercrafted poisons on the broker for around 10s each. Those would one-shot most mobs pre level 15 when it triggered. At level 18 they still take a good 50-60% of a mobs life when they trigger.

Both of those classes are also VERY heavily dependant on combat art upgrades. If you can take all your damage arts to at least App 4 and one or two of them to adept 3 you will have a much easier go of things. If you leave them at App 1 you are going to struggle a LOT come level 20-25.

Recently bought EQII.  My main is an 8 necro but I heard an SK is good for farming instances.  Any suggestions about this two classes would be appreciated.

Haven't played much with the necro but took a Conjuror up to level 70 at one point. Pet classes are always good and can usually take on lower level heroics.

My SK is currently at level 31. You should be able to do lower level heroics but I've been 2-boxing with an inquisitor lately. The SK + Inq combo is fairly awesome. No problem with even level heroics other than a few named mobs.

My SK is also level 31, and I get pretty trashed by some of the heroics. I was stalled out of doing Harclaves because of the heroics near the end. I got most of them but then a group of yellow ^^^ heroics jumped me. That sucked. But my wizard wouldn't even have made it that far.

I don't do dual boxing. That's broken game design imo.

Some heroics are tougher than others.  and also what is a simple fight for one class is nigh impossible for another.  Tried to solo the Sludge Creeper (lvl 39^^^) in Enchanted Lands with my 48 assassin and though I was ahead of it most of the fight I just couldn't get my stun to land long enough to get off a big attack and so at the end it got in a couple hits in a row and I was toast.  I watched a lower level Necro pretty much handle that same mob without hardly thinking about it.

For soloing, you really need to be set up pretty good to be effective. Thus my eventual, long-evolving plan to level up a couple guys with the intention of twinking out a necro that will be the character I actually play through most of the content with. So...that should happen by about 2016.

I made him an adept-level pet. Fire bat is so cool compared to the normal bat...but it's still the shitty, ineffective low-level pet :P

I just started trying it. Been playing EQ2 since release but have only been 2-boxing for about a month. Since, my work laptop is capable of running the game, the new job has no restrictions on laptop usage, and I have access to my dad's account that he barely uses I figured I'd give it a try.

I've only done a little bit of the heroic content so far but you can blow through the solo content about twice as fast. The only bad part is that vitality just seems to bleed off way too fast when boxing.

My assassin is pretty well set up, mastercrafted ebon or better for armor and weapons though I am a little lagging on upgrading to adeptIII's and masters as 1.5pp+ ea is a bit much for the wallet to support atm (prices jumped a LOT mid 40's, 3+ pp in spells every level isn't happening).  But yeah, masters on the CA's would have made the difference in that fight

As far as twinking goes I've had a lot of success selling harvesting rares and feyiron/carbonite clusters from the 20's and 30's on the vendors.  It takes very little time to harvest full stacks of feyiron or carbonite and they go for 15-25s ea so they add up pretty quick.  10gp for a stack of carbonite and 10 minutes worth of work is nothing to sneer at especially with the chance at a rare steel, feysteel or loam too.  Quests in Sinking Sands are delivering 5-10gp a pop now (one on the carpet quest gave up 25gp!) so that's probably a more efficient use of my time than harvesting in Zek/EL or TS/Nek anymore.  Harvesting in SS is riskier and less likely to pop a rare but probably equivalently more useful when it does too.

If you can get up to the mid 40's, Sky, you definitely owe it to yourself to do the Desert of Flames thing, lots of good solo quests there and it's all very well done.  In fact, if you have DoF I would recommend going to Maj'Dul early (late 30's or early 40's) and just wandering around for the easy exploration AA (and the collection quests!).  There are a few aggro lvl 45 street thieves and such though so it's not entirely a walk in the park but still it's easy enough.

I've had DoF for a long time :) KoS, too. I've just never accessed them because my two characters are 31 and 30. I'll probably continue to focus on the Shadowknight when I return this fall. Might even return earlier this year, after I finish up Gothic 3.

His bottleneck, iirc, is crafting up armor. His armor is getting pretty shabby and when we last saw him he was in the enchanted lands harvesting like mad. I was getting shafted on metal spawns, it kinda sucked. Usually I'll throw on the ipod and spend a couple nights (which is to say a couple hours at best) harvesting up everything under the sun (because all my alts are crafters, too), but that was getting ridiculous.

I'd probably be higher level if I hadn't had combat experience turned off for a month or so. I've already outlevelled most of my armor (mostly 20 class armor quest, except the chest I couldn't solo at 31) and I'm way past outlevelling all my CAs, so I need to craft up my tradesperson for that, too. I made some decent dough right near the end of my last playtime, might have a couple dozen plats now.

Sky,

Unless you REALLY enjoy the crafting game, I'd suggest you just buy what you need.  I leveled an armor crafter up and found that unless I was making armor for a guild, it was actually cheaper to just buy the armor I needed.  Of course, the freedom to make what you want when you want is still priceless. 

I'm thinking about playing again.  I've got a Brigand, Inquisitor, Warden, and a few others in the 30-50 range.  I'm debating starting from scratch just to try a new class.  Any suggestions?

MOST crafting isn't bad. Armorcrafting is a hot stick in the drawers. A swift stitch in the bush. It sucks because you get maybe two or three non-rare recipes per level, so you have to grind it out. Most other crafts have a bunch of stuff you can get first-craft experience from (mostly spells/CAs) or are grindy but useful (provisioner). Armor I was cranking out shitty piece after piece to sell back to the vendor for dirt.

I don't mind crafting too much, as I said I usually throw on the ipod and do some critical listening, zoning out on the game. But armorcrafting...weaponcrafting was getting pretty bad, too, but I think I'm still early 20s in weapons, whereas I'm early 30s in armor.

You might want to hold off starting from scratch until Kunark launches, eh? I'll probably roll /another/ alt at that point.

Troubador or Dirge, the bards are defintely worth a try.  I tried a troub just for kicks and levelled to 70 pretty quickly.  Super-efficient soloer on blue con mobs, always brought lots to a group (whether the group knew it or not), and always a required class when raiding. A troub can solo most named green heoric content using patience and a mez.  So whatever your play style needs are, the bards are pretty flexible.  The run speed buff makes a huge difference throughout the game.

Illusionist is another solid class to try. The combat is a bit more strategic and interesting.  Solid DPS and one of the best solo classes in the game.

You hit on the two absolute worst crafting professions as your two choices (discounting transmuting and tinkering that is). Armorer and weaponcrafter are far and away the two most painful. Tailoring and woodworking are up there as well but at least tailoring has more recipes and woodworking has ammo and totems. Carpenter can be bad at times as well but they are at least the best writ runner so you can grind writs for money and exp.

I have a 70 weaponsmith, and boy was it a painful process.  I didn't sell a frickin thing, just weaponsmithed to gind writs.  Alchemist or Jeweller are the way to go for sure.

I've grouped with a few bards now, good class to have around.  Buffs, solid dps, down time mitigation and some crowd control.  Very solid class, very rare too.  Illusionists are also pretty rare and competent ones are even harder to find.  Most of the ones I've grouped with you don't even know they are there because they skip doing any CC and just focus on DPS so unless you check you think they are a wizzy.  The couple of good Illusionists/Coercers I've seen around usually also have to spend a lot of time teaching the group how to deal with CC because it is so rare in EQ2.

Warlocks are amazing in a group, the AoE's make most multi-mob fights feel too easy in fact.  Of course, Warlocks also tend to need a lot of mid-battle rezzes but I think that might be mostly due to player incompetence.  Necros, as in EQ1 are jack of all trades and master of DPS.  Heal a little, CC in a pinch, DPS, pet tank and etc.  They only thing they are lacking is travel enhancing utility.

My illusionist rocks, I need to get back to him at some point, too. I've never played one before, but I've played with enough in EQ to know the importance of learning to utilize the mez lines to the hilt. Sometimes I'd just lock down some mobs for fun to practice. The pet is a bit tougher (iirc, it's been a while) to control than the my necro pet in EQ was. Still, a really solid class.
I have every crafting profession covered :) My provisioner is in his 30s, the rest are in the 20s (except the armorcrafter, as I said).

Shoot me a PM when you do (server too!).  I find that leveling is more bearable if you actually know someone that is going through the same thing... again. 

I am also down with starting a new character once Kunark launches as well.  Count me in.

I had an illusionist early on, (before the class 1-20 revamp thing).  They were great for grouping, but a PITA to solo...  what changed?  I never recall being anything like 'solid DPS'.  I thought they played a lot like an EQ1 enchanter.

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Alkiera

Illusionists have been revamped quite a bit.  I am not sure what "early on" was for you.  Did the illusionist have  a pet when you played?  That alone increased solo-ability of the class exponentially.  The pet combined with mezzes and stuns makes soloing green and blue heroic content quite easy - with solid strategy and patience.  The additions of AA's has also pumped up the DPS to acceptable levels.  We are not talking to tier Scout or Mage DPS, but enough to make soloing effective.

Hrm.  I don't remember a pet.  Mostly, everyone loved the power regen and power-drain powers I had, as an enemy without power was much much less annoying, and waiting on power sucked.  CC was good too.  Outside of groups, I remember doing some root-rotting and stun-nuking type things, but that it was always rather scary.  I played a warlock, too, and he could just destroy stuff.  Those guys peaked out about 25, though... I had an SK get to the low 30's, but wasn't overly impressed with him at the time.

'early on' for me was from release to about 1 year.

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Alkiera

Well, yes a pet has been added and DPS has been buffed for illusionists.  However, power drain has been pretty much completely nerfed, especially on heroics. Niot really a viable tactic anymore.

Heh.  Power Drain was almost broken anyhow.  (As in, OMG that's powerful.) Drain all the power out of a boss, he stops the killer special moves, and becomes just a hard-hitting rat with more HP and a different model.  My regular group loved me, but it was still tough to get pickups, because people didn't realize what an illusionist could do... Most people were expecting EQ-Enchanter style stuff, and Illusionist mez just wasn't that effective.

I keep being tempted to restart EQ2 or CoH, since I'm between MMOs ATM, aside from :nda: .  I have a scrapper who's 46 or so, I'm tempted to try to get him to 50 just so I can unlock the other character types (the transforming lobster/squid aliens).  The new I9/I10 patch stuff looks neat.  On the other hand, I've heard nothing but good improvements to EQ2 since I played, it might be neat to give it another go.

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Alkiera

The patch server seems to have multiple personality disorder...  It varies from file to file, how fast it will pull down data.  I wish fewer files were on the 'slow' server... this download has been running for about 24 hours now, with a brief break of a couple hours this afternoon.  It claims it has 4.5 hours yet to go.

It's nuts that on top of having a short trial period (7 days?  come on.), you end up spending a non-trivial portion of it just watching the download progress.

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Alkiera

Can't say I can sympathize with you. Never had a problem with any SOE update, even patching EQ2 from the beginning - and I believe that was 6 hours in total.  I might resub sometime soon to EQ2, so I will see if that has changed.

"If you would like to continue playing any characters you may have made"

But I didn't get to make any characters! I patched and then had to do something else for a while. I guess I could make another Station account, but my will is sapping away as I write this post. You really don't want me to play your game, do you, SOE?

Hadn't seen that problem when I did the play the fae trial before this latest stint.  I don't recall the entire download taking any unreasonable or unexpected amount of time.

Did you check to see if they had a topic on this issue at the official boards?

Well, "for a while" meant "one or two weeks", so I was kinda expecting it.

Why they couldn't make it 7 days and 14 hours played trial, I don't know. Must be some old-school thinking still going on at the EQ2 team.

Yeah, what I didn't like about Play the Fae is that I had to create a new Station account for it. Initially it told me "your trial has expired" because my Station account had played the old Trial of the Isle demo. That seems kind of careless on SOE's part, given they want to show people who didn't like it before that they might like it now (not that I like it at all).

I'm gonna point that out to SOE. It's an interesting complaint as the game has changed so completely.

I had the same issue when i downloaded the client to my laptop. After 2 days I gave up and took it to work where we have a 1gb t1 line. It went much faster there.

The weirdest thing was that it varied from file to file... size didn't matter, it's like the patch server connections were round-robin, and I'd occasionally randomly pull the stupidly slow box for one file.  Then it'd be very fast for a few, and then slow again.  It was nuts.

I haven't checked the forums.  I did log in an play an illusionist to 10.  That was pretty fun.  I'll prolly log in again tonight, if I can, and see if I can access global channels in other games.  (like in EQ, you can chat cross-server by joining bristlebane.channelname when you're on Firiona Vie...  I'd heard it worked across games, too.)

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Alkiera