f13.net

But egads, that's some ugly avatar creation.  Of course, it's not like you can't great fugly avatars in every single mmorpg I've played.

The comment was because NiB thought that WoW's models weren't very good. But by looking at EQ2, WoW looks now awesome.

The comment was because NiB thought that WoW's models weren't very good. But by looking at EQ2, WoW looks now awesome.

What matters to me is who has the best of the best graphics, and which has the generally better of the average graphics, not who has the worst of the worst graphics.

Bruce

Why can't you jump in SWG?  It was a design decision.  It never had anything to do with the engine.  They basically looked at all the problems past games have had with pathing and people using jumping on things to exploit and said 'no jumping'.  The engine is perfectly capable of jumping, atmospheric flight, jetpacks, whatever.  But the devs have chosen for whatever reason not to have that sort of thing.  Fear of exploiting and feature bloat mainly.

I have a deep, dark suspicion that EQII will be mind-bogglingly good.

I have a deep, dark suspicion that EQII will be mind-bogglingly good.

A collection of ugliness was posted at Anyuzer's forum:

http://www.myimgs.com/data/ladypolaris/omfg.jpg

They basically looked at all the problems past games have had with pathing and people using jumping on things to exploit and said 'no jumping'. The engine is perfectly capable of jumping, atmospheric flight, jetpacks, whatever. But the devs have chosen for whatever reason not to have that sort of thing. Fear of exploiting and feature bloat mainly.

Personally, I blame SOE for treating beta testing as a marketing exercise and reward all in one. The first people they invited were the very people for whom the game was not intended.

Most of the stuff I was reading made me go "Cool."  Then I realized it was EQ and regretted my feelings.  If it had been called something other than EQ maybe many more people would be jazzed about it.

Ummm, look in the lower right corner, at the red-haired mustachio man there.

Shouldn't he be on his knees like a little baby seal in front of a line of Chippendale's dancers right about now? If that's the best EQ2 can do in terms of butch avatars, forget it.

On second thought, forget it anyway.

A big reason why I'm not buying it outright, but will watch over the eqholic's shoulder. But I'm a bit more optimistic about it than most mmogs in the pipe, not that that's saying much ;)

See, but that's just the thing. I know two EQholics and both of them flat out refuse to play EQ2. They just won't do it. I'll admit they might give it a try, but the first thing they encounter that is not like EQ in the gameplay will drive them right back to the old tried and true. I have tried to interest these two in several other MMOGs and they end up leaving after the first month because it's not EQ.

And you've concluded this from a few pictures of ugly avatars?  You know, there are ugly people in the real world too; does that mean God's graphics engine sucks?

It was a function of CSR.

I know two EQholics and both of them flat out refuse to play EQ2

They don't even have a collision detection coded, not only they erased the CSR issue but they also erased the need of a collision detection

Really? I must stop drinkin' then. These big freakin' buildings, bridge railings and trees keep forcing my finger away from the move-forward key.

Objects have no consistence and when you are blocked (rocks, buildings, trees) you are because there's a general "box" around the object.

Shouldn't you just be happy for them?  We talk here all the time about finding the perfect game for ourselves (different for each of us) and then you critisize them when they find the game that is perfect for them?

I am still looking for my perfect game.  I wish I was still happy with EQ.

It's a complete collision system that in SWG doesn't exist. Server-wise the world is flat with a few boundaries here and there. Remember the fact that you can shoot through an hill without the server noticing?

It has to because there is pathfinding in the game that is not based on a hard-coded knowledge of every static element in the world. There can't be. People place and remove structures all the time, changing where the AI can go.

another is that terrain DOES block line of sight and shots now.  It has for months now.  The capability was always there, they had it in early beta and then it got shut off for reasons unknown to me.

...

It was of course NOT server lag, but after being out since late(ish) beta till a few months ago it is now back in the game.  You can't shoot jack shit from in a ditch.

the vaguely erotic lure of free J-Boots for preorder accounts

The jboots are for eq2 but be advised I do not think they will be anywhere near as strong as the eqlive ones. Still anything that makes you faster than normal is a hell of a bonus for traveling.

kaid

I think some of the fat assedness is also made worse by the really shitty newbie outfit. It just hangs badly and the neutral wide legged stance they have in the generator makes it look very bad. I am witholding some judgement on that until I see them in more normal outfits. The movies and pics I have seen I do not notice the issue like I did in character select.


Kaid

Jboots for EQ2 or for EQ?

SOE announced the specifics of what's included in the Collector's Edition today. If you pre-order any version of EQ2 from most retailers, you also get the EQ2 Starter Kit, the contents of which have already been listed.

From the official boards:

"Today our PR department sent out the following information:

The pre-order disc for EverQuest II, Sony Online Entertainment’s (SOE) highly-anticipated fantasy Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG), is currently being distributed, and the pre-order program will be in full distribution the week of August 2nd, at select retailers. Three versions of the final game will be available at launch, all of which can be pre-ordered at participating retailers. Here is a list of the three different skus:

CD Version ($49.99 SRP)
Includes EverQuest II on a series of CDs, in-game item (exclusive paintings of EverQuest II scenery/screenshots to be used in player housing), and in-box item (poster with Qeynos and Freeport maps on each side).

DVD Version ($49.99 SRP)
Includes EverQuest II on a series of DVDs, in-game item (talking statues of Antonia and Lucan to be used in player housing), and in-box item (poster with Qeynos and Freeport maps on each side).

Collectors Edition ($89.99 SRP)
Includes EverQuest II on a series of DVDs, and the following in-game items:
· Paintings of EQ II scenery/screen shots to be used in player housing
· Talking statues of Antonia and Lucan to be used in player housing
· Exclusive baby dragon pet for player house

The collectors edition will also include the following in-box items:
· Exclusive Art Book
· Bonus DVD with all the trailers, gameplay videos and behind the scenes footage
· Soundtrack CD
· Collectors coin with velvet pouch
· Cloth map of the Shattered Lands
· Poster with Qeynos and Freeport maps on each side
· Poster with Antonia and Lucan on each side

Note: This information pertains to the US market. Details on international editions will be posted soon.

============================
Moorgard
EQII Community Guy"

Cheers,

Sorran.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How many people are currently in the beta right now?

Sites: Right now, including all the people at the company and their friends and family, we've got about six hundred in the beta test.

What would you say you've learnt most from it so far?

Sites: Aside from all the bugs we've been fixing you mean? We've found that a lot of the things that people had been complaining about - the encounters, the reduction on raiding sizes, for example... People had been saying that because something didn't work that way in EverQuest, it was therefore going to be bad.

We've found that once people actually started playing the game and see the changes they complained about before trying them, they find they actually really like them. We'd found that just with the game in general there had been a lot of people that didn't really expect that they'd even want to play the game.

We found that if we could just get them to sit down and try it even for an hour it completely changed their perspective.

How hard has it been to get them to try it?

Sites: Back at the EQ Fan Faire in April there were so many people that were saying they had no interest in EQII because they didn't feel we could create a game that would be any different to EQ. We sat them down, they tried it and were like, 'Oh my god! This isn't what I was expecting at all!'

The big thing is that change isn't necessarily bad. Just because players have been used to doing things a certain way for five years in EverQuest, it doesn't mean that changing it will be a bad thing. Just getting them to try it out though, that's the key. That's the biggest thing we've had to figure out.

How much are you expecting the overall game to change from your initial designs once the beta test runs its course?

Sites: Based on what we as a company have seen in the past, we're expecting it to change significantly. There are a lot of the systems and areas, such as the tutorial and the introductory part of the game on the Isle Of Refuge, that we feel we've now refined to a point where it's not likely to change a whole lot. But the big areas that probably will change are things like the encounter systems, the population sizes of the dungeons.

All the things that require lots of sets of eyes to go through and look at and experience before we can say definitively say something needs to change. The worst thing a development team can do is get used to something and then just change it for the sake of it. One of the problems any team has is when they create something phenomenal, see it every day and become jaded towards it and then feel it needs changing as a result when that's not necessarily the right thing.

So by letting people into the beta it's been really nice just to see their reactions to things. You get completely unbiased opinions at that point.

Where do you draw the line between changing something because lots of people ask for it and you as the developer saying, 'no, we really think it's best if it stays as it is'?

Sites: First and foremost, as much as we're making a game that we love, we need to make a game that the public are going to love more. We love the game with a passion, but if we're the only ones that like a system and 90 percent of the public don't understand or like it, then it's going to change.

A lot of it comes from going through the feedback. If lots and lots of people are complaining about something then we'll try to improve it. It's a subjective process but that is what the beta is for, to get all that information.

There aren't many people in the world with more subjective views than gamers, most of them different...

Sites: One thing we have found out is that it doesn't matter what we do, we'll never please everyone. We found that out in EverQuest. You can give people a million dollars each and someone will complain they have to pay tax on it.

When, for you guys, is 'finished'?

Sites: When the game is fun, which again is a subjective part of the process. We have in-game polling forms that come up asking you about your experience, ratings on a scale of one to ten. When we start getting those back with consistently high numbers that's when we'll consider ourselves close to being able to ship the game. But it is subjective.

We're not going to be forcing this game out the door though just for the sake of meeting fiscal needs. We've been stating that all along. This is going to be the game that's the sequel to the game that made the company what it is today. So we want the game to be a worthy successor to EverQuest.

That feeling of independence, not beholden to shareholders and publishers, must be invigorating?

Sites: Yeah. I have quite a few friends who work for companies at EA and Microsoft and they're all beholden to shareholders for the most part. We feel very lucky that we can work on a game that's not going to go out until it's ready to do so. That said, we do want to get the game done!

We've been working on it for four years now and we definitely can't wait for the moment people can start playing it. That's the most rewarding part. EverQuest for instance now has hundreds of thousands of people playing the game and that's great, especially seeing them at Fan Faires and so on.

When you see that sheer devotion that people have to your products, how much does that become a burden of responsibility when you design future games?

Sites: Oh it's huge. When we were making EverQuest we couldn't even comprehend the level of dedication the players would have. It was just a $3 million project and we were really only making a game that we liked. Then it launched and we were like 'Oh my god! People REALLY love this game!' and our development process definitely changed as a result.

One of the problems a lot of MMOGs have is having these great big worlds with nothing happening in them...

Sites: Right. Actually, when we first started making the game we had planned on this grand world, this great expanse of space. We started planning this giant dungeon but discovered that you know what, it's not fun running for fifteen minutes and not finding anything. So we ended up pulling the size and scope in and focussing on the content in the different areas.

That's where we're at right now, players are walking through the city and having characters calling out to them, based on what they've done and what quests they can do, instead of having to run for ten or fifteen minutes at a time just to try and find something to do.

What sort of things?

Sites: There are simple things like a little girl chasing her cat around the city knocking stuff over, or big things like the Freeport militia marching through the city, giving speeches to the citizens. It's all things that will help make the world seem more alive.

How much work does that entail?

Sites: We actually have 34 designers on the project, so we have groups of these guys that are just dedicated to adding events like these to the cities.

Do events like that happen outside the cities as well?

Sites: They will do, but the way that we're designing the content is from character creation on outwards. So we're putting all our focus on the cities right now, then slowly working our way outwards so that when the beta testers come in, they're not finding they have nothing to do because, say, we decided to design all the high-level dungeons before we worked on the starting cities.

Are you able to keep tabs on how far the testers have explored into the game and how far ahead you need to be designing?

Sites: Oh yeah. The way the beta test is being run right now means that we basically 'rope off' the areas that we want people to be testing in. Right now players can create their characters, go to both Qeynos and Freeport, the outer lands in the common areas outside in Antonica and access two of the dungeons in each of those areas. This way we get very focussed testing and feedback and can get those areas refined. Then, once those are ready for 'prime time', we start opening up the next zones further and further away.

The zones are all planned in advance and then left to the players. How possible is it for you on the server side to jump into zones when players enter them and direct the NPC's actions on the fly, in a sort of 'dungeon master' role?

Sites: We can do that, although mostly the zones are scripted in such a way as to be completely self-contained and capable of handling things. Once everything has been tested and refined, very rarely will we need to have people go in and watch the players and change things on the fly. Still, we have that option at our disposal if we need it.

How big are the cities in total?

Sites: Each of the cities are made of eighteen zones, each consisting of the town centre, the villages or neighbourhoods which is where you start out and where each player has his or her own apartment.

The houses are given out automatically to each new player?

Sites: Right. When you create a character you're given a little one or two room apartment within which you can place furniture, hang stuff on the walls and customise the interior. When you get into a larger guild or group and start pooling your money you can then buy larger structures within the actual city, decorated with your guild's emblems. When people walk by they'll be able to see who the badass guilds are.

In terms of overall size, how does EQ 2 compare to EQ?

Sites: It's slightly smaller in size than EQ, but the first game has had five years of development work adding to it. The only reason they have a larger physical size is because they have loads of really huge zones left over from the earlier expansions. Like Kunark. That has huge, empty zones simply because we didn't then have the ability to populate them completely. So, we have slightly smaller areas, but lots, lots more content in them.

What sort of mass transit systems are there?

Sites: We have boats for travelling between the shattered islands that make up the world. We'll also have player mounts that are racially specific. So the humans and the mid-size races will have horses, the gnomes and halflings and dwarves will ride wolves, and we haven't decided on what to have the larger races riding, although we're thinking about things like rhinos or elephants. Very large creatures.

I remember seeing the letterbox effect at the Fan Faire and thinking how it was such a small thing but had such a big impact on giving a real cinematic effect to the game...

Sites: It not only adds a cinematic effect but also has its benefits for speeding up rendering times. But everything else in the game was already so cinematic - the voices and so on - that I just wanted to add that in. A lot of people really liked it when we got it up and running.

How is the voice acting working out so far?

Sites: Really well. We just started a two month-long recording session last week, two sessions going on simultaneously for two months straight. We have 117 actors and that's filling the majority of our v/o needs right now.

How much focus is there on the audio side of the game?

Sites: One thing that's nice is that on EQ we had three people on our audio team. Now we have an entire audio department. Which means full audio, 5.1 surround sound support.

How on top of the hardware and peripheral world are you guys? Are you constantly looking for new gadgets to utilise?

Sites: We're working really closely with nVidia, you'll see their logos in our games already. They provide us with all the latest hardware before it becomes available on the market and we work closely with their engineers to request special modifications for our game. We're very on top of the technology. We're also working closely with ATi. We like to make sure that the two hardware kings are both in our corner.

How about other advances such as voice comms?

Sites: We're going to be allowing voice comms although we haven't fully integrated it yet. The only problem we see with it is obviously with the players. With real voices you'll interact with a female wood elf and quickly realise it's a forty-five year old guy. It's kind of immersion breaking.

What about the genre as a whole? What do you see as being the next major innovation to hit MMOGs?

Sites: Hardware is definitely the biggest limitation right now. Once we reach a level where the majority of people can afford to purchase the high-end types, that's when we'll get a lot of extra players coming in. The US has a really high-end hardware market, but there are still a lot of countries out there that operate at a year or two behind that in technology terms. Once we get everybody's specs up to par then the games will become that much more accessible.

One of the things we're doing to get the international community more involved and interested with EQII is full voice translations. We're doing a simultaneous launch in North America, UK, France and Germany, then shortly after that we'll have Japanese, Korean and Chinese releases.

How is the interest in Japan?

Sites: Actually we worked out a deal with Square Enix, in theory one of our big competitors with Final Fantasy XI Online, to be our publisher in Japan. So we're working really closely with them on ways to localise it not only with language but also visually.

That hasn't been ironed out completely yet, but there's a reason why EQ is really popular in the US and Europe, but not so in China and Korea where games like Lineage are. So we're trying to figure out exactly what those differences are.

Darniaq pointed out some of the reasons you were wrong, another is that terrain DOES block line of sight and shots now.  It has for months now.

The last few days I've been shooting shitloads of stuff thru hills. Only things blocking LOS are structures and rocks/vegetation.

Ninety bucks for the collectors edition.

$900 in store credit at EB Games and the vaguely erotic lure of free J-Boots for preorder accounts compelled me to pick the thing up this morning. The thing I noticed messing around with it is that the females all have insanely big hips and asses, and there's no way to change it. It's really bad looking. Worse than some piece of shit bass/ghetto trash CD cover bad, but without the thong to distract you from how fat and ugly the asses and hips really are. Other than that the characters can look really good. I made a dark elf female that looks pretty good and as soon as I can get in the game and toss on some old school DE assless leather pants I'll be set.

Oh well, I'll get my money's worth by training giants on people again with the J-Boots if the game sucks.

That collector's edition is a lot better than the..ahem, digital sunglasses.

Will the Starter Kit be made available for download?
We have no plans to offer the Starter Kit for download. The primary purpose of the kit is to generate interest for EverQuest II at retail outlets.

In short, MrHat, there are ways to play with their character creation without violating the 'wait 3 months' rule.

--
Alkiera

Alas, I'm weak and had credit at EB to spare.

In addition, they've confirmed their necessity more so by saying they are untradeable/unsellable.

So I was trying to warez me the EQ2 Starter Kit and found out that it is FREAKIN A 482 MEGS ISO! WTF!

The release is specifically tagged as CD2 and Character Creator. 480megs is a bit much for a CC, I suppose there's loads of other crap on CD2?

SOE is supposed to be evil afterall, so just go with it.  There are probably 300 megs of textures that just say "HAHA" on them.

I have found that I really like WoW's ubiquitous "bind on equip" as a solution that cuts down on mudflation a lot while still allowing a trade economy, and avoiding the annoyance of repair.

Make me an example of an object like a box or whatever, that isn't a building, and that will allow my character to not be in direct contact with the ground. I mean something I can climb. There is NO collision system (that isn't a general "box").

WoW uses this for most of the good loot that drops randomly. The good loot that drops from particular mobs (usually bosses in instances) tends to be "bind on pickup" to prevent farming. Those you can only sell to a vendor or destroy once you loot them.

I'm not sure which will be the more 'casual friendly' game.

It would be hard for me to imagine a more casual friendly game than WOW. Mind you, I hated the game, but it's all solo. Very very very dumbed down and very very easy to play with a low commitment required to play and succeed at.

They are coming to play until bored.

It just means that you shouldn't be required to dole out chunks of your life in 5+ hour chunks on a regular basis to advance in game

But they aren't coming looking to invest time. They are coming to play until bored.

Space sims on console?  Don't make me laugh.  Space sims all universally suck on consoles because of the television resolution limitations.

The reason I can't pay for CoH is the lack of anything to do. WoW is exactly the opposite, but may be lacking the other thing that compels me to pay: reasons to do stuff with other people.