My early impressions of EQ2

[Riggswolfe]

Made it to level 9 last night. I'll be doing my class quest for level 10 tonight I guess. I want to play with the graphics settings, so far the game looks terrible. I mean, butt ugly. I mean DAOC ugly. I need to raise my textures or something I guess.

My biggest complaint at the  moment is still that it is hard to find things. For instance, I got a quest to deliver some lager to a tavern in one of the city zones. Neither Aslan nor I can find this tavern. I had another quest to take a blue stone to a mineral guy to have it analyzed. Aslan literally stumbled across the guy. The quest doesn't even give you a hint as to where to find the guy.

Maybe I'm too used to WoW which tends to be pretty specific in most cases. "Deliver this note to so and so, who is in the weapon shop NW of here". Then you have EQ2. "There's a guy. Somewhere. Find him."

Aslan and I are having issues with group HOs. We can alternate our Solo HOs in fights if we time our attacks right, but we rarely get true group HOs.

[Trippy]

Aslan and I are having issues with group HOs. We can alternate our Solo HOs in fights if we time our attacks right, but we rarely get true group HOs.

You need to begin a starter chain that has icons around it that the other players can trigger.

For example, here's a starter chain I started as a Scout:

The only chain I can continue as a Scout is the green coin one. If I do that one that'll bring up a "solo" HO. All the other icons can only be triggered by other archetypes (at least at my level) and those will bring up a group HO which typically takes 2 combat arts/spells to trigger instead of the single combat art/spell a solo HO needs.

It may be that at your levels the two of you have no starter chains that can be continued by the other player's archetype combat arts/spells so you are stuck with solo HOs until later levels or you add other archetypes to your group.

[shiznitz]

I wrote this up for some friends on another board. Hope it is helpful.

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Last night really exemplified the best of EQ2 so I thought I would share more. I will try and be as general as possible to avoid spoiling.

I logged in and decided to continue my class quest. I was 80% through level 8. I had to talk to some people to learn about the Crusader option. I then decided it was time to upgrade my combat skills so I recalled to Graystone Yard, the starting area for Barbarians and Dwarves. I found the trainer and bought and scribed some of my combat art from Apprentice I to Apprentice II. I grabbed a quest to kill some shrillings (bats, basically) in the Down Below (catacombs). I still hadn't done my Kill 10 Ratonga quest so I figured I would try to do both.

The shrillings were all green/blue and marked solo. It did not take long. Then I started looking for the ratonga and found them nearby. However, there were 3 packs, all marked group, some ^, some ^^, some white and some yellow. I was going to need some help. I started chatting with people and found Ilryssa (8 priest) and Tasiren (7 fighter). Tas needed the same quest. Supposedly you really should have 4 for a group encounter, but it is beta so what the hell.

To pull, I waited for the 3 packs to separate then picked a white group and taunted one and pulled to my group. Targeting 1 highlights all of the linked mobs. The 3 rats surrounded me and I AE taunted, followed by my AE spin attack. I am getting hammered, but the priest is doing well healing me. One rat goes after her and Tasiren goes for the peel without being prompted. In the middle of the fight, one of the ratonga says "Is anyone a healer?" I almost pissed my pants. We win.

The next fight I screw up. Two ratonga in different groups are too close when I pull. We get 6. I die, my fellows run. I don't know if they broke the encounter (hit the "call for help" button and other people can heal you, kill the mobs for no exp), but they get away. I respawn IN THE CATACOMBS at the entrance area. How cool is that? I have a 400' run to get my spirit. There is no binding that I have seen. When I die, I appear in the zone at some safe spot. The exp debt is a red highlight on my exp bar. It is gone after 2-3 more fights.

After that we get in a groove. After a few more fights (the quest has long been completed) I ding level 9. We stick around since the fights are fun and the spawn rate is fast. The only downtime is 30-45 seconds here and there for the priest to regen power (it's not really medding anymore.) I get a new art, Call to Arms, that is a 30 second group attack buff with a 45 or 60 second recast timer. I open my "spellbook" and move it to my hot bar. I had to make room by moving my gate spell to hotbar #2, which I keep hidden. Very intuitive stuff.

I decide to go get my quest rewards. The shrilling guy give me some copper and a choice between 2 items: a ring and a belt, both yellow to me and both with resists. I take the belt. Next I go to the ratonga quest giver and get offered copper and the choice between 3 red weapons: 1 handed hammer, 2 handed hammer and a dual wield hammer. These weapons all max out at level 20. I cannot equip any of them. I pick the 1 handed and sell it for 4s. I use this money to buy the rest of my art upgrades to Apprentice II (which all cost 1s 22c). I am a happy Barbarian. I am halfway through level 9 now.

Later on, I met up with Gael. He is a level 7 scout. We try a group encounter in Antonica, but these blue snakes kick our ass. Group encounter = healer needed? Maybe. Probably. We kill some solo stuff that is yellow to me with no problem. I am getting 1% exp per kill. When I was killing blues solo, I was getting 1.5% per kill. It was fun seeing the scout Heroic Orgasms (as I like to call them) for the first time. We kept interrupting each others chains. Some chains required a mage which we didn't have. Heroic Orgasms scale with group size btw. Both of ours were doing almost double what they did when solo.

My last task for the night was an arena fight to become a Warrior. It was a solo affair against some weak grouped animals in a warehouse. I was 95% through level 9 when I started and dinged 10 upon completion with almost 20% of 10 completed. My new art was Taunting Blow which does what it sounds like it does. I logged. Play time ~ 2 1/2 hours.

The game is fun. No denying it. I am curious how other classes play. I have a feeling that every class plays very similarly in that you click your spells/arts at the best times. This should make it easy to play other classes, but it might hurt replayability quite a bit.

[shiznitz]

My biggest complaint at the  moment is still that it is hard to find things. For instance, I got a quest to deliver some lager to a tavern in one of the city zones. Neither Aslan nor I can find this tavern. I had another quest to take a blue stone to a mineral guy to have it analyzed. Aslan literally stumbled across the guy. The quest doesn't even give you a hint as to where to find the guy.

Right clicking on a guard ggive you the option to ask for direction to an NPC. Type the name. Sometimes the guard will not know, sometimes he will point in the general direction. You might have to ask several guards, but it works ok most of the time.

[Sky]

There's also a decent waypoint system I uncovered by accidentally clicking on something, it listed all the npcs in the zone that I knew and I could click on the names to create a waypoint/glowy trail.

[Soukyan]

My biggest complaint at the  moment is still that it is hard to find things. For instance, I got a quest to deliver some lager to a tavern in one of the city zones. Neither Aslan nor I can find this tavern. I had another quest to take a blue stone to a mineral guy to have it analyzed. Aslan literally stumbled across the guy. The quest doesn't even give you a hint as to where to find the guy.

Right clicking on a guard ggive you the option to ask for direction to an NPC. Type the name. Sometimes the guard will not know, sometimes he will point in the general direction. You might have to ask several guards, but it works ok most of the time.

Ah, but that's half the fun of the blue gem quest. The quest is to find a mineral expert. That quest is specifically geared at the Explorer types (of which I am one). I love just cruising around the city doing quests and finding neat little things. It makes it more immersive for me. As a matter of fact, the next generation of MMOGs could work on the immersion factor by raising the level of interaction with NPCs such that you could ask other NPCs if they know of a mineral expert and they could give you clues, or not, as to who might know more or who might be one. Hell, they could do that now, even if it was just on a static basis driven by their current menu conversation system. So anyhow, ummm, yeah, I enjoy the occasional quest with very little info. Hell, I have one to find a guy in Antonica. I have a name and a huge zone to search (note: I won't use maps to find him because it breaks immersion and ruins the fun of the hunt). Now, if every quest was like that, I might start to get irritated simply because it would be way too time consuming.

[Riggswolfe]

There's also a decent waypoint system I uncovered by accidentally clicking on something, it listed all the npcs in the zone that I knew and I could click on the names to create a waypoint/glowy trail.

Well, if you're a scout that is the tracking ability. It seems ot have a limited range or something as sometimes the NPC would show up and sometimes they wouldn't.

As for asking the guard, that's all well and good and I tried it, but I never once got anything but a shrug from them so I gave up on it.

Oh, and about the Citizenship book quest, I was told in game that a couple of the NPCs aren't spawning and haven't for awhile. No big deal.

Also, Aslan and I stumbled onto an access quest. Not sure what it does, other than you know, give access. Access to what I don't know. It has to do with ratonga though.

[shiznitz]

As for asking the guard, that's all well and good and I tried it, but I never once got anything but a shrug from them so I gave up on it.

I had modest success.  Call it 50/50.

[kaid]

If you are going after  single mobs listed as group cons they will be pretty tough for a duo. They are doable usually but you have to work well with your other team mate.

Usually when I am in a duo we tend to pick on solo con mobs but of a higher level like high yellow or oranges. If you have three people you should be doing group con mobs pretty well.


kaid

[Sky]

I haven't played a scout yet.

[Alkiera]

Oh, and about the Citizenship book quest, I was told in game that a couple of the NPCs aren't spawning and haven't for awhile. No big deal.

Also, Aslan and I stumbled onto an access quest. Not sure what it does, other than you know, give access. Access to what I don't know. It has to do with ratonga though.

They fixed the Citizenship quest today.  The guy no one could find apparently isn't supposed to be there, 'cause they removed him from the quest completely.  At the end of it you get the book to keep in your house.

The access quest appears to be access to another zone, Lanei and I have worked thru a good bit of it, just have the big bad guy, the undead noble guy, to kill to finish it, I think.

As far as group and ^, ^^, ^^^ mobs, I'm pretty sure it means bring a healer.  Rogue/Enchanter groups can not deal with the level of damage they output.  I can take (group) pairs by mezzing one to start and killing the other one, but ^ mobs are tougher, more hp, more damage... and ^^, if it's not by itself and green, I don't touch.  Solo Blue^^ group mobs eat my lunch.

As for it being hard to find things...  That is actually a bonus for me.  Like Soukyan, looking around and exploring is a large part of the fun.  Part of what bothers me about CoH is that the game holds your hand the whole way, with waypoints, arrows, maps, and rarely leaving you without a contact for missions.  Today they also added an in-game map for Antonica, which is pretty helpful due to it's large size.

I also found a repeatable quest today, has you kill 10 fire beetles, snakes, and rats in Antonica.  There are some solo, and some grouped, versions of the mobs out there.  Quest reward was decent exp and 2 silver.  Lanei did it again got 3 silver.

They also changed the HO system today, gave everyone a power that does nothing but start the chain, which you continue with your powers.  The chain works the same way as before, just with a different power starting it.  I personally think it's annoying, other people seemed to like it.

I'm having a blast in the game.  I will not be playing at release, I'm gonne give it some time to mature before playing.  I may pre-order for the J-boots, tho, if I can convince the spouse.

--
Alkiera

[Riggswolfe]

The guy I couldn't find was a knight commander or something like that. I also had trouble finding some NPCs in Antonica simply because I had no idea where to look. Found the one in the lighthouse but that was it. I've found the others.

I too need to kill the Undead Fallen Noble as well for the access quest.

Aslan and I have primarily dueled. I'm a scout, he's a sorceror. It's worked pretty well. We had a healer team with us once to kill some elemental types in the forest ruins. (Forgotten Guardians I think). He and I both noticed the battles were much, much easier with a healer. Worlds of difference.

I can see where explorers like the whole "there's an NPC somewhere you want to talk to thing". I like exploring overland, but not for quests NPCs.

[Lanei]

The guy I couldn't find was a knight commander or something like that.

Knight commander Sydwen.  For a while he was by the claymore in North Qeynos.  Then they took him out.  Today they fixed the quest so you have to go to Knight Lieutenant Somethingorother.  Hes easy to find in NQ, and is also who gives you the repeatable quest Alkiera mentioned.

In-game maps of Antonica were added in todays patch, with fog-of-war.  The map is about as useful as the maps in the Qeynos city zones.  Which means 'not very' for those of you without access to the game.

Todays patch also added poisons for rogues, and pet cats you can buy for your house.  It also broke some spell effects, introduced several bugs, and completely fucked up access to the tradeskill instances.

[Sky]

Heh, the tradeskill instance on the Isle was more stable last night that it was all weekend.

I thought it was a good patch, fixed a hell of a lot of things I've bugged in the last few days. I like the new HO system, it allows players to use thier character's abilities without needing a scout around to constantly be rerolling the chain. I'm glad my fighter can kick again without having to do the whole chain or lose it every time, now kick is an independant attack.

Adding abilities to lone group mobs? Oh yeah. The Shadow Serpent is now not soloable by a melee (at least without AppIII, I haven't scribed mine yet). I used to smack it for an item when it'd spawn, killed me fairly easy with it's new poison attacks (I counted two). Then after I got my spirit back, I watched another fighter die twice to it, then a rogue do the same.

It's nice that the snake now poisons, but kinda sucks for soloers, since it was one of the few good item droppers on the Isle.

[jpark]

I finally tried this damn thing the past few days.  Overall.... I like it.  But by that I mean I like the grind to a bigger purpose, raids, death penalties, reputation, trade skills and new combat systems.

EQII is a bit different from WoW  and EQ in its combat paradigm.  You have zerging - you pull entire groups - unlike EQ.  Unlike CoH - there is not only healing aggro - but too much of it.

The ideal group is really 2 priests and 2 tanks.  Fill in whatever for the rest.  Because aggro is so fast for healing it requires different strategies than traditional MMORPGs... save Shadowbane (pvp).  The key attribute of a healer here is... Constitution (born out nicely by our tests in SB).  Priests get too much aggro give the nature of combat.  Most folks are thinking non-zerg - and see their main attribute as Wisdom for healing...

So new learnings here - and I like that challenge.

The scout class is damn powerful and fun to play - right of the bat you get a nice movement buff, stealth and tracking.  Good start to that class.

The models still suck - but a few are better than I expected.  I did not find lag to be an issue to date.  

Ya I like elitism, politics and tough situations.  I like all this and be "casual" at the same time - which makes this activity even harder.  There are 3 guys I play with so this will be our next challenge.

I thought the voice over to be a gimmick until I played - it does add immersion.  Fortunately they are not planning faction balancing like in WoW - since I have a feeling those choosing Freeport for a starting city will be low.  I was there 5 minutes and it gave me a headache.

Its hard to play any of these games after CoH though.  EQ2 is so stiff compared to CoH in how the models move and your ability to interact with the environment.  Watching avatar jump in EQ2 is just... ugly.  However, the incombat animations are excellent (eye candy).

I realize that a lot of what can appeal to me in a MMORPG is repugnant to many of you - so the fact I did enjoy this game may be consistent with that (plan to keep the CoH sub though).

[Riggswolfe]

Well, I enjoyed EQ2 for the time I beta tested it. In the end it's just not for me. It's too ugly with my current system specs, combat is too group-focused, it's anti-casual, anti-solo. The quests were neat, I loved stumbling on quests by clicking on piles of books in dungeons, things like that.

The HOs were neat but need an overhaul. Why does a scout cause a bunch of rocks to fly up when he does an HO? Shouldn't his HO be some kind of kidney shot or something?

I am thankful I got a chance to betatest. It was entertaining and frankly, it also saved me $50.

BTW, here's an interesting anecdote. I have a friend who is a hardcore EQ player. Been playing it for years. He came over to my house and wanted to see EQ2. So, I start it up. It starts a download. My computer slows to a crawl, IE, trying to do other things while it downloads is almost imposssible. It finally finishes, I load it up. I show him Qeynos. Zone. Crash. He shakes his head and tells me he's seen enough, then asks me if he can log onto my WoW beta account to play.

[Alkiera]

Is your machine that much worse than my 1.4 ghz Athlon?  I have 512MB of ram, and a Radeon 9600 Pro(128MB).  Other than South Qeynos, the game runs fairly well, better than EQLive in many cases...  And it looks better than EQLive does too, IMO.

I played up thru the end of beta today, and enjoyed it.  The crafting is interesting and deep enough to explore, the world is large and full of quests, at least up thru the low teens, that I was rarely for want of things to do.  I couldn't solo everything, but I didn't have problems getting a group to help me with a few group^^ mobs a few times that I needed to kill some for quests.  The last several days they were finishing the crafting society system, and adjusting harvesting, and all kinds of things.  Really, the game looks pretty good.  I don't agree that it's ready to ship, there are still plenty of issues with the game, but not much another week or two wouldn't have cleaned up, at the pace they were maintaining for the last week.  It was nuts the amount of things they'd fix(and break) in each hotfix.

I don't plan on playing next week, but maybe next year.  Give them a couple months to finish the game, clear up the major issues that show up when 100k people all try to play at once, and then maybe I'll give it a shot.

I played an Enchanter to 13, and a Predator to 12 or so, enjoyed both greatly.

Alkiera

[Kageru]

The crafting looks disastrous to me. Such an inordinate number of rare dropped books, excessive sub-combines, rare spawn harvesting and tedious process that only the truly masochistic would bother with it. Give me crafting which is convenient enough you can justify using it on consumables (e.g. WoW's explosives, weapon and armor patches).

Oh well, I am very looking forward to release and the month after, but only as an observer, i'm still not convinced that SOE will manage to patch in the fun. In addition having boss mobs quadding for 3K on release make me wonder about their high end game balance.

[Alkiera]

The crafting looks disastrous to me. Such an inordinate number of rare dropped books, excessive sub-combines, rare spawn harvesting and tedious process that only the truly masochistic would bother with it. Give me crafting which is convenient enough you can justify using it on consumables (e.g. WoW's explosives, weapon and armor patches).

I never got a 'rare dropped book'.  I certainly didn't _need_ one.  Everything I needed was in the books available on the vendor.  Was there stuff I couldn't make?  Sure.  Was it anything that I OMG HAD TO HAVE!?!!!  No.

I'm confused about the 'rare spawn harvesting'.  There were harvest nodes all over the place.  By the last day there were more different kinds, as well, so that there were fewer things per type of node.  They split the roots out into herb garden, roots, and another garden, and added bushes for berries and other things.  Except when they were messing around with the harvesting systems itself(changing to skill reqs and use-based skillgain over level-based), I never really had a problem finding the resources I needed to make stuff.

Finally, IMHO, the many subcombines are a good thing.  It makes the crafting process take some time...  and if you put the time-usage on that end, you have less of a tendancy to require a large amount of time getting the items to do the crafting, a la EQLive.  As in real life, the difficulty isn't so much in getting the raw materials, they're outside laying around.  It's in  knowing what to do with them once you have them, and how to do it efficiently and effectively.  Some might call that craftsmanship.  Making the crafting process take time also lets you give better exp rewards for doing it, so low level crafters won't have to flood the market with hundreds of useless items.  I was able to level up to 10 Scholar just making things I needed for my own use, with the occasional item made for curiousity, or to drop in my shared bank for my rogue alt.  Not thousands of rifle barrels or tent kits or burlap pants or other useless crap.

Oh well, I am very looking forward to release and the month after, but only as an observer, i'm still not convinced that SOE will manage to patch in the fun. In addition having boss mobs quadding for 3K on release make me wonder about their high end game balance.

I'll just be an observer for the first couple months, myself.  Not gonna pay to watch them finish the game, I can do that for free.  I found the game to be fun already, tho patching in some character stability and fixing of bugs with some game systems will certainly enhance the fun, and reduce the occasional frustration.  As far as the end game... I'll worry about that in a couple years when I get there.  It took me more than 3 years to get to the EQ endgame, I don't expect this game to improve that time much.  The journey is fun, imho.

Alkiera

[Riggswolfe]

Is your machine that much worse than my 1.4 ghz Athlon?  I have 512MB of ram, and a Radeon 9600 Pro(128MB).  Other than South Qeynos, the game runs fairly well, better than EQLive in many cases...  And it looks better than EQLive does too, IMO.

My machine is better than yours. Not much, but a little, mostly in ram. (I have 1 gig.). Aslan, who posts to these boards occasionally has a better PC than mine and he crashed about 1 in 5 times we zoned.

I think the problem is the game is just not close to optimized and it is affecting some computers worse than others.

[Lanei]

I think the problem is the game is just not close to optimized and it is affecting some computers worse than others.

Possible.  Perhaps the lack of optimization can be attributed to them probably issuing debug builds, and running them on the servers, especially during the stress tests, they would want the profiling data.

Of course, optimization can introduce its own bugs and misbehaviors, especially in a project this size.

In the couple weeks I was in beta, I crashed to desktop once, and had no issues at all with frame rate with the graphics settings turned up a bit, but not all the way up.  For hardware comparisons, my rig is a dual Athlon XP 1600 with 1.5 GB of RAM and a Radeon 9800XT.  I think its safe to say that More RAM = Better EQ Experience, no matter which version you have.

I like the EQ2 crafting.  The reaction system could have been based on ideas in discussions here among other places, make crafting a mini-game.  Make it more than time investment.  I think they had a fair success at it, and as far as I know its the first major budget MMOG title to include something like it.  Harvesting isn't too onerous, dropped crafting books and  rare item recepies are not the be-all-end-all of items.  The "forced" specialization is a little heavy-handed in my opinion.  Once you get past crafting level 10, you cannot make every sub-component of a recepie yourself.  In some ways this mitigates the number of sub-combines, since the sub-combines for a given recepie are spread out over several professions.  On the other tentacle, hardcore crafters are going to use their other character slots, or other accounts to make crafters of those other professions, so they can do as much as possible of the work themselves.  Still, I expect there will be people that fill the market niche for subcomponents by making almost nothing else, and selling them.  

Housing... meh.  Its nice to see a game deliver it on release when they said they would.

Market  - like the bazaar in EQLive, but without a big zone that makes your computer cry.  Excellent design, decent implementation.  I'd have made it so you could bring up the market window from any market-connected merchant, not just a broker, or a market board you own.  Maybe even let any player market merchant BE a broker, though that could be exploitable with cooperation.   Best feature: its in at release.  Worst feature: you have to stay online to market, just like the bazaar.

Scout ringing blow HO graphic..  if you use an anime paradigm, hitting someone so hard the ground under them explodes kinda works..  At least its better than a lightning bolt from the sky when you hit them really hard with a sword.  Honestly, I never paid much nevermind to the graphical effect, other than to note they broke it several times while I played.

overall, I'm probably in the same camp as Alkiera, I may pick it up in January or so, but likely no sooner.

[jpark]

I did encounter some pretty serious game play issues in the Down Below which wiped my party twice.

In on instance the skeletons attacking us ... were invisible.  You literally could not see them.  In the second instance you could see them, you just could not target them.

Ack.

[Lanei]

I did encounter some pretty serious game play issues in the Down Below which wiped my party twice.

In on instance the skeletons attacking us ... were invisible.  You literally could not see them.  In the second instance you could see them, you just could not target them.

Ack.

Alkiera and I ran into the former, but not the latter once.  Fortunately we were able to target the offending skeleton, once we figured out what the heck was going on.

Wandering aggro in the catacombs is seriously unfun, and at the levels that zone is designed for, pretty much completely unmanageable.

[shiznitz]

Well I plan to go the tank route in EQ2 after playing a ranger for 63 levels in EQLive. If my job is to hit taunt every 5 seconds, I won't last long in that archetype. Pre-taunt patch, I could taunt to pull, then AE taunt, then AE attack and the priest would get aggro from one or more mobs pretty relaibly within the next 20 seconds. AE taunt never got the mobs back on me the first time. I would taunt the one with the most health/highest level first, then AE taunt then AE attack again to get aggro back under control.