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f13.net  |  f13.net General Forums  |  The Gaming Graveyard  |  Everquest 2  |  Topic: November 9th 0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
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Author Topic: November 9th  (Read 5853 times)
Nebu
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Posts: 17613


on: November 10, 2004, 09:16:36 AM

I have a morbid curiosity about how the launch went?

Were any of you brave enough to try playing yesterday? How did the launch go?

"Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other."

-  Mark Twain
Sobelius
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Posts: 761


Reply #1 on: November 10, 2004, 09:24:59 AM

Played for 8 or so hours yesterday. No problems at all -- after the 10 (!) CD installation, the download patch was fairly painless. Played almost entirely in Isle of Refuge and by the time I left I had 200% xp, so when I finally finished my citizenship quest, I bumped up to level 8.

- Never disconnected from the game
- other than a minor quest bug, everything else worked

Since I didn't play in Beta, the whole thing was new to me, but didn't take long to get used to.

You can't take 5 steps without tripping over a quest. That's pretty good. However, I see very little replayability in the quests since they're not particularly exciting.

I'm playing a Kerran scout on the road to be an assassin. So far it's held my interest. Avoiding crafting entirely for the time being.

"I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." -- Voltaire
"A world without Vin Diesel is sad." -- me
Aenovae
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Posts: 131


Reply #2 on: November 10, 2004, 09:36:05 AM

Yep, so far it looks like the smoothest launch since DAoC.

The only issues I've heard about are isolated Collector's Edition shipping problems, and confusion on how to activate jboots.  The jboots thing is quickly answered by just checking the official forums, where numerous CSRs are actively and quickly answering questions (seriously).

The game has plenty of bugs, but the serious ones (e.g. crashes) are extremely rare.  I personally haven't crashed or disconnected even once.  The other bugs are just simple annoyances like bag windows resetting to their default position when you open them, and a few newbie FedEx quests being uncompletable.

The initial patch download took only ~15 minutes, and was delivered in a way you would expect - without problems or fuss.

Account registration went without a hitch judging from the lack of bitching on various forums.

This is the way things should be.  It's sad that this is even a topic for discussion.
Soukyan
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Reply #3 on: November 10, 2004, 09:36:39 AM

Apparently some Collector's Editions were delayed due to problems with "production quality" so I must wait until tomorrow to begin playing. From what others have said, it sounds like everything has been smooth thus far.

"Life is no cabaret... we're inviting you anyway." ~Amanda Palmer
"Tree, awesome, numa numa, love triangle, internal combustion engine, mountain, walk, whiskey, peace, pascagoula" ~Lantyssa
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Sable Blaze
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Posts: 189


Reply #4 on: November 10, 2004, 09:38:05 AM

The game itself runs pretty well. It has the occasional crash, but no worse than CoH in that regard. You do have quests waved under your nose about every 6 inches.

System reqs are brutal. No two ways about it. Its mean to run. Your experiences on Refuge won't prepare your box for the assault on it when you hit Freeport (and Qeynos, I"d assume). I've finally settled (sorta) on most detail at medium, a few at high, running at 1600x1200. That's on an AMD 3000XP with 512mb of RAM and a 6800. I could use more memory.

The game itself is very reminiscent of EQOA. The stacked death penalties are pure madness. Why Sony can't figure this out, I don't know. The whole shard recovery thing should be shit-canned yesterday. The ingame map is borderline useless. It's a grouping game and no map means it can be very difficult keeping the group together--especially those with marginal systems...which is most people. Still trying to figure out aggro mechanics. It's weird, suffice it to say.

I'm undecided about it. It's fun (the combat), but has some VERY frustrating elements (map, lag, aggro and targetting  weirdness). It's mean to run (Athlon64 with 2gigs of memory here comes me).
Sobelius
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Posts: 761


Reply #5 on: November 10, 2004, 10:15:48 AM

My system specs:

P3 1.2, 768 MB ram, GF3Ti200/128 video
connected via PPPoE DSL

running windowed 1024x768 resolution
detail set to high

Combat anywhere has occasional choppiness, nowhere near as smooth as CoH or GW, but I can usually get my HO moves done.

I don't care for the death penalty either -- on a couple of occasions I waited until some poor loner trained a group of the mobs that killed me so I could run in and get my 'shard' -- only had to do this twice, so not so bad...yet.

Most embarassing death was due to accidentally double-clicking a Blacksmith out in the Crossroads. I thought he was a merchant and 1 sword swipe later I was dead at his feet -- won't make that mistake again I hope.

Only disappointment so far has been story-wise. I had a quest to get a cheaper room if I did the dirty work and evicted a guy from his apartment. Cool -- fits my character. But in the end of the storyline, I was forced to take the standard apartment. Too bad -- I wouldn't have minded some dingly little room for an apartment, especially if it didn't require 5s a week upkeep cost....

"I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." -- Voltaire
"A world without Vin Diesel is sad." -- me
Kenrick
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Posts: 1401


Reply #6 on: November 10, 2004, 10:18:21 AM

I'm interested in playing but...

1) I want to wait for major reviews to come out, along with further player opinions from f13-ers.
2) I really shouldn't buy anything until my next paycheck.
3) I'm not ready for fiancee to hate me.
4) Half Life 2 is coming out real soon, and for a couple weeks that will probably be the only thing I have time to play, so I'm in no rush to jump into any mmog.
Toast
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Posts: 549


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Reply #7 on: November 10, 2004, 12:08:34 PM

So far so good. My roommate and I, who both did not play in Beta, were able to go from install to registration to patching to playing in less than 1 hour. There were no problems at all.

My experience has been restricted to newbie island. I have a p4 2.8ghz, Radeon 9800, with 1gb of ram. The game ran absolutely flawlessly at the default medium settings. My roommate and I both did not encounter any crashes. Smooth launch.

I'll probably write a review eventually. So far so good (in the easy newb levels), and I dont' regret at least giving EQ2 a try.

Ps. There is a really cool web integration deal called EQ2Players where SOE runs reports and rankings from server data. Your characters are fully browsable at this website, and you can see where you stack up versus other players as far as quests completed, NPC's killed, how fast to each level, etc.

A good idea is a good idea forever.
shiznitz
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Posts: 4268

the plural of mangina


Reply #8 on: November 10, 2004, 12:13:58 PM

Other than the Permafrost server crashing for 30 minutes last night and suffering a small rollback, everythying has been smooth. The initial patch after installation took about 7 minutes over cable modem. There were 16 instances of the Isle of Refuge on Permafrost. One can switch instances to meet up with friends without a problem.

When I got to Qeynos, it was laggy as fuck due to all the PCs, but I didn;t see anything gamebreaking before the aforementioned server crash.

I have never played WoW.
Numtini
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Reply #9 on: November 10, 2004, 12:38:24 PM

Everything's been great. No lag. No crashing. And everything seems to work.

I got the CE yesterday from ebgames.com The junk in it is nice enough for what it is, but I do like my dragon.

If you can read this, you're on a board populated by misogynist assholes.
Cyraxx
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Reply #10 on: November 10, 2004, 02:17:34 PM

My system: P4 3.2 GHz, 1GB RAM, Mobility Radeon 9800.
High settings.

The graphics are really good, and I haven't seen any lag whatsoever, even with a ton of people in the same zone. The music is really good too, and the voice overs are cool. I sort of hope you can turn them off though, because those people shouting at you in the street are going to get annoying in the long run.

The quest driven thing is awesome, it's really cool that you don't have to "camp exp", you can just do quests and the exp is like a side effect. :)

Getting around the newbie island was very easy maybe too easy. It's easy to find your way around Free Port, I don't think there should be a better map (radar). A part of the game should be the whole exploring thing in my opinion.

Some of the quests doesn't make much sense, but I guess when you make hundreds of quests you run out of good ideas eventually.

The only thing that I think is really bad about the game is the interface. I mean fuck... this is exactly the same interface as the default UI for EQ: Shadows of Luclin. To start with you have to resize everything to fill out the black areas, then there's the fading chat windows, those are fun for exactly 2 mins, then they are turned off.
Wasted
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Posts: 848


Reply #11 on: November 10, 2004, 08:16:39 PM

I got to play for about half an hour then the servers went down.

Yay.
Toast
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Reply #12 on: November 10, 2004, 09:01:27 PM

Bad night for the servers all of the sudden.  Thank goodness for the comforting powers of pron.

A good idea is a good idea forever.
Glazius
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Posts: 755


Reply #13 on: November 11, 2004, 05:24:22 AM

Quote from: Sobelius
Most embarassing death was due to accidentally double-clicking a Blacksmith out in the Crossroads. I thought he was a merchant and 1 sword swipe later I was dead at his feet -- won't make that mistake again I hope.

Sigh.

If someone can come up with a good reason why a toon of any experience would want to kill town guards/workers/bartenders, let me know? Because either way it seems like "they counter-attack and DESTROY YOU UTTERLY" is not quite so useful as "the UI doesn't let you hit them".

--GF

Unless he was an EVIL blacksmith or something, in which case, forget what I just said.
Sobelius
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Posts: 761


Reply #14 on: November 11, 2004, 06:20:38 AM

No -- the Blacksmith and the farmers and their cows are neutral. Of course if you attack the cows they become EVIL cows!

I remember a problem with two NPC farmers in DAOC out in Cornwall Station -- I had killed so many of their rooters, the guys were hostile to me. Until I got to some high level I would have to make a mad dash for the horse ride there to get away -- the farmers usually chased me a good ways, attacking the whole time. Ahhh...small amusements in an online game...

"I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." -- Voltaire
"A world without Vin Diesel is sad." -- me
Sobelius
Terracotta Army
Posts: 761


Reply #15 on: November 11, 2004, 06:30:49 AM

Quote from: Toast
Ps. There is a really cool web integration deal called EQ2Players where SOE runs reports and rankings from server data. Your characters are fully browsable at this website, and you can see where you stack up versus other players as far as quests completed, NPC's killed, how fast to each level, etc.


Yeah -- I'm just annoyed that they are charging extra (after first month) for most of its features. Got to hand it to their business folks for finding ways to milk it.

It actually works, though, and is fast. If you're curious, you can check out my Kerran Predator, Sobelius.

Oh -- and someone pointed out this URL to check the server status without having to log in:
http://patch.everquest2.com:7010/patch/eq2/motd/en/updates_live.html

"I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." -- Voltaire
"A world without Vin Diesel is sad." -- me
Kageru
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Posts: 4549


Reply #16 on: November 11, 2004, 02:27:54 PM

Someone mentioned that according to the stats SOE's web page collects "a treasure chest" was the third most deadly NPC in Norrath. I see it's fallen to number 4 today with 1,829 kills, such a lame balance mechanic. Page seems pretty damn sluggish to me as well.

I wanted to see how the level progression is moving. Top of the pack at about L20 it seems, but I got bored waiting for their pages to load.

Is a man not entitled to the hurf of his durf?
- Simond
eldaec
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Reply #17 on: November 11, 2004, 03:07:43 PM

Quote from: Sobelius

Most embarassing death was due to accidentally double-clicking a Blacksmith out in the Crossroads. I thought he was a merchant and 1 sword swipe later I was dead at his feet -- won't make that mistake again I hope.


At least they didn't map autoattack to a fucking vowel this time. ;)

"People will not assume that what they read on the internet is trustworthy or that it carries any particular ­assurance or accuracy" - Lord Leveson
"Hyperbole is a cancer" - Lakov Sanite
Toast
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Reply #18 on: November 11, 2004, 03:21:30 PM

Those treasure chests can be painful. Many are trapped, and a couple of them cast a 15 minute debuff on you.

99% of the treasure chests are going to be low level / low hp noobs on Isle of Refuge. I am sure it will drop off the charts as the server levels up.

A good idea is a good idea forever.
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