Dirty little secret

[Sobelius]

Though I am still enjoying EQ2 as a guilty pleasure -- it has my inner pixel collector and database geek totally addicted -- I can not see any of the beauty of the world anywhere since I keep my rendering setting low.

For incredibly beautiful and smooth engine, my current faves are City of Heroes and Guild Wars. Both of these games are smooth, stunning, have visual style and panache, and I never experience lag. I also have the settings in both games maxed out with nary a complaint from my PC.

Yes, this thread is getting sidetracked -- so to stay on thread I'll say again, I'm playing and enjoying -- only wish all of us weren't spread out on so many different servers. I wish there had been an F13 server, but alas, this group-focused game didn't attract enough of us together to actually group on the same server -- I could really use a good guild about now...

[Resvrgam]

My take on the graphics discrepancies is more of an observation for the process the two camps reached for their graphics/end results:

WoW’s graphics (IMO) are dated.  They look like something I modded on the Quake 3 engine more than 4 years ago.  However, the artists’ ingenuity through the limitations within their engine is profound.  They haven’t tried for realism and failed.  They have created a Disney-esque ambience where one can be fooled into thinking they’re living in a cartoon world.  I guess one could judge the experience as: the graphics aren’t great…not horrible…just nothing our eyes haven’t feasted on before within the past few years.

EQ2’s graphics lost their luster after seeing what current First-Person Shooter engines are capable of (HL2, Farcry, Doom 3, etc).  It appears they have tried to produce realism but failed miserably (Play-Doh doesn’t make for realism on people’s heads).  Instead of dealing with the limitations in place, the art team chose to force its hand on hardware that just simply cannot endure some of the sloppiest techniques I have seen to date (it feels akin to a master artist with a crayon [WoW] vs. a 3-year-old with a camera [EQ2]).

Both systems didn’t supply anything spectacular in the graphics area but, it feels more like WoW made something work first and then worried about how it looked while EQ2 took the Apple approach: make it look nice and worry about functionality later.  The excuse that software is designed for future, untested hardware insults me as an end-user and to be honest: EQ2 at its best (2 FPS) doesn’t look all that impressive to me when compared to current titles that have less hostile hardware requirements.  

So for the people playing either of these games based on aesthetics….looks like either choice is a bad one.

[Toast]

I am hitting a wall.

I wanted to be able to group with my roommate (who created a 'good' character at Qeynos). So, I began the interesting Freeport to Qeynos betrayal quest. I had no idea what I was getting into.

After some pretty cool instanced missions and cutscenes, including my execution, I made the dangerous trek over to the good continent. I was excited to start playing in a new area. I then found out the next part of the quest:  Kill 500 gnolls. Kill 5 different rare named gnolls that you cannot solo.

Not long after that, I found out that my level is frozen at 17. I grinded away at the 500 but have only killed 2 of the 5 rares. Last night, i had one pulled right out from under my nose just before engagement.

So, all of the evils of Everquest have kicked me in the groin: Forced grouping, camping and grinding through hundreds of foozles, camping rare spawns, and rare mob "engagement stealing".

Adding to this, the content feels too linear and limited. The level distribution of mobs leaves almost no freedom as to exploration and finding new hunting areas.

I'm still hanging on by a thread, but I think the forced grouping is going to kill me off.

[Sobelius]

I am hitting a wall.

I wanted to be able to group with my roommate (who created a 'good' character at Qeynos). So, I began the interesting Freeport to Qeynos betrayal quest. I had no idea what I was getting into.

Unless you had a really strong attachment to your Freeport character, or you really wanted to do the betrayal quest, I would have simply rolled a good character and levelled it up to join your roomate.

A friend of mine recently joined in and started a cleric on Nov 22. He hit 16 two days ago with a fairly casual play schedule -- leveling to 15 or so is pretty quick given the many ways to get XP: exploring, quests, combat. The best XP is when you can hit all three -- have several quests stacked that require going to a location that gives you XP to 'discover', XP from the mobs you kill, and then XP for completing the quests.

EQ2 may be a forced grouping game, but I have been able to play a lot of time solo and am a level 19 predator. I just finished my assassin class quest (solo). Of course, things may change a lot once I hit 20.

[Sky]

There's no debate about whether or not EQ^^x2 is soloable or not, it's just that the solo content is garbage, yard trash. No nameds, no dungeons, no fun.

I got to level 17 summoner quite easily, mostly solo. But I also have about 30 quests I need to do in dungeons that are grey to me, too high level to get a group, too low to safely solo through the dungeon, just right for cancelling my subscription.

Honestly, I like EQ^^x2 enough that I seriously considered dual-boxing it, but I'd need a new computer, as #2 is down with a bad mobo, and it's simply not worth buying a new pc imo just to circumvent a crappy gameplay mechanic. I'll leave that for the eqholic (who asked me a couple weeks ago about building a new pc for him, dollars to donuts that's why).

[HaemishM]

I then found out the next part of the quest:  Kill 500 gnolls. Kill 5 different rare named gnolls that you cannot solo.

Not long after that, I found out that my level is frozen at 17. I grinded away at the 500 but have only killed 2 of the 5 rares. Last night, i had one pulled right out from under my nose just before engagement.

That's fucking insane, and a kick in the groin.

[Nebu]

That's fucking insane, and a kick in the groin.

True.

Surprising? No.

[Mesozoic]

After some pretty cool instanced missions and cutscenes, including my execution, I made the dangerous trek over to the good continent. I was excited to start playing in a new area. I then found out the next part of the quest: Kill 500 gnolls. Kill 5 different rare named gnolls that you cannot solo.

Not long after that, I found out that my level is frozen at 17.

.....


There are no words.  But if there were words, "insane" and "groin" would be two of them.

[Toast]

I know my story is dangerously close to whining. It's just that this quest and its underlying design principles have beaten me down.

I was originally sold on the game because of the apparent depth and amount of nostalgic content, but it seems to be doled out too slowly to hold me in.

[Sky]

No, kill 500 anything is a square nutkick, it's not you, toasty. Hell, it's bad enough when I look at my exp progress, figure out how many mobs I need to hit the next level. I remember in SWG I had something like 1500 mobs to kill for a single box of exp that didn't grant any benefits except pad the next skill box which did. That's about the time I quit SWG, actually. Now I try not to do math in relation to mmogs, it's too depressing.

[Toast]

Oh, it gets better.

At the end of the quest there is a dialogue. If you answer questions incorrectly, you are "fined" 1, 2, or 3 gold pieces. You cannot proceed in the quest until this fine is paid. There is no way to waive this fine.

To put this in perspective, the "best" drops at level 17 sell for around 2-3 silvers. The most silver I have ever had is around 80 (which equals .8 gold). Also bear in mind that players in the midst of betrayal are unable to bank or do tradeskills.

http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=quest&message.id=6752

It's an interesting quest...but, I wonder what gameplay reason necessitates making this quest such a beating.

[Sobelius]

It's an interesting quest...but, I wonder what gameplay reason necessitates making this quest such a beating.

C'mon toast. This is too obvious...

EQ mainliners (my ex was one of them -- he derided me for switching to AC since it was 'too easy'), thrive on the 'hardcore' idea of a something being "a challenge". It takes a certain kind of masochist to love EQ/EQ2 designers for 'making them work for it.'

Frankly, I quit EQ1 after 2 months because it felt like a job and a chore. So far EQ2 has not made me feel this way, but I read enough about the betrayal quest to read-between-the-lines and understand they were catering to the "punish me" crowd. I mean, the whole idea of betrayal serves no real purpose other than to allow you to play a dark elf paladin or a halfling assassin or a dwarf shadowknight, etc. Basically, something to let you stand out in the crowd. Sigh. Your reasons for wanting to do the betrayal quest had nothing to do with this so, to quote The Crying Game,  "you're fucked, Fergus". If you simply wanted to play with a friend, rerolling was the way to go.

Don't get me wrong, BTW, I'm not defending the design decision that made the betrayal quest as frustrating as you've described. I think it's whacked and I don't think I'll ever attempt it, even for "fun" -- because it doesn't sound like fun. I just think you should have taken the reroll route.

[HaemishM]

This is what is so fucked up. The fact that Qeynos and Freeport are diametrically opposed to each other amounts to JACK AND SHIT in the gameplay, other than that you have to bank, live and shop in one city and not the other. It doesn't stop you from grouping with players from the other city (AFAIK), and the only difference is in a very few of the classes that are one-city only types. What city you are from amounts to less than nothing, unless your friends are in the other city.

[Toast]

There is a little bit of a masochistic sense of accomplishment that comes with this quest. As a troll in Qeynos, I know that I would be somewhat unique.

This is similar to the catass titles that players wear quite proudly. Killing 500 mobs of a certain type will get you a "Hunter of Foozle" title visible to other characters.

In retrospect, I should have re-rolled, but that's water under the bridge.

Funny thing is, the quest wouldn't bother me nearly as much if I were able to solo through it. I work in finance and I live in Microsoft Excel, so my tedium tolerance is high. I just detest the idea of begging strangers to group with me to kill a single quest mob. Forced grouping for the win.

[Alkiera]

This is what is so fucked up. The fact that Qeynos and Freeport are diametrically opposed to each other amounts to JACK AND SHIT in the gameplay, other than that you have to bank, live and shop in one city and not the other. It doesn't stop you from grouping with players from the other city (AFAIK),

Agreed.  There's supposedly all this treachery going on, and fighting, and stuff... that only happens when PC's aren't around, as far as we can tell.  It's pretty lame.  The entire point of the betrayal quest is to allow for Ogre Paladins(there are at least 2 on Guk server), High Elf Shadowknights, etc...  For the 'just because' crowd.  Wonder how many dark elf rangers there are, serverwide.

and the only difference is in a very few of the classes that are one-city only types. What city you are from amounts to less than nothing, unless your friends are in the other city.

Technically, of the 12 classes, 8 have their subclass determined by city, the other 4, one from each archetype, can choose either subclass no matter their choice of city.  Those are sorcerer, warrior, druid, and bard.  The other classes are all forced to a subclass by their city.

Really, tho, I don't know why.  Other than the obviously good/evil version of crusader, the cleric/shaman, and I guess the inherent evil of necromancy, there's not a lot of lore support for the distinctions between one forced subclass and the other, or why they are different.

Alkiera

[Sky]

Bah, necromancers aren't evil, just misunderstood. And really, nobody is using those moldy corpses for anything, anyway.

Damn I wish I had gotten to play a necro in EQ^^x2.

[Murgos]

There is a little bit of a masochistic sense of accomplishment that comes with this quest. As a troll in Qeynos, I know that I would be somewhat unique.

This is similar to the catass titles that players wear quite proudly. Killing 500 mobs of a certain type will get you a "Hunter of Foozle" title visible to other characters.

Good news is that although you get 'locked' in your level until you finsih the quest once it's over you get all that exp your earned.  I've heard its usually enough to put you into your final class and that once you do that quest to level you again once or twice.  So, you dont really lose anything you just get stuck in tedium-land for a while.

Look at me apologizing for EQ II, I must not be feeling well.

[shiznitz]

We have had 2 people complete the betrayal quest from Freeport in the last week. Yes, these are 4 hour-a-day players. 500 gnolls sounds bad, but there are groups of 5 everywhere and killing 5 blues in a full group takes 3 minutes max. This is about 3 hours of "grind" including running around time. The nameds are more of a bitch, though. However, if you are betraying to play with friends, then those friends should be helping you and their quests are heavily gnoll-related anyway.

[Toast]

I finished the quest last night. Total time played to accomplish was about 18 hours over 5 days. Most of the 500 gnolls I killed were low level grays that gave no exp...aka pointless grindage. Experience-yielding gnolls would have taken much longer.

[kaid]

The killing 500 gnoll part is moot. If you are leveling up in antonica you WILL wind up killing at least 500. Hell my main has almost 1k gnoll kills and I did not even do the betrayal quest I just happen to really like black burrow.

The nameds are tricker but if you do it when the server is busy with 2 or 3 instances of antonica you can do all the nameds with one group in about 2 hours give or take.

We did this for a couple guild mates and while it was a bit of an annoyance it really isn't that bad. If however you do not have alot of friends in the side you are planning on betraying to I would not bother. Also I would say unless it is your main and you really want to for betray to not bother. You can usually find a comparable class on either side without the pain.


kaid

[Riggswolfe]

Hearing this kind of thing is why I'm not playing EQ2. I just can't understand the mentality of the developers that they thought this would be fun.

[Resvrgam]

...while it was a bit of an annoyance it really isn't that bad.

I'm not sure I'm following this:  Are games supposed to be bad at all in the first place?   Last I checked, I'm not forking over a subscription fee to be punished by a virtual dominatrix dressed in shitty polygons and Play-Doh hair.

It's a real shame that there's a market for total shit in pretty (to some) packaging.

I'm with Riggswolfe, this is why I haven't bothered either.  It just feels like a set back when this type of design (or lack thereof) is being rewarded by entrenched markets.

To further add weight to how lame the design aspects are (IMO): Gamespy announced a random drawing of entries for a contest involving "Design a Quest for EQ2!"  After looking over the applications and seeing no mention of writing quality or design experience as being a factor in the contest, it shows just how hard-up these people really are for making new "quests" in addition to their already brain-dead selection of Fed-Ex and Kill Mob X tasks.

[Gondonaron]

I wont play eq 2 for 2 reasons. 1. any game that has a reccomended 1 gig of ram scares the hell out of me. I literally burnt up a motherboard playing eq 1 b/c of all the cacheing to my hd. And I had the reccomended 512 megs of ram 1 gig processor and the video card to go with it. 2. I think SoE blows. I finally got the picture when Gates of Discord came out in Eq1 and it dawned on me. Hmmm in addition to the 13 bucks that I pay to play this game in order to progress I will have to shell out 30 bucks every 3-6 months. That just sucks. Personally I like WoW you can solo or group and the game is just as fun. FUN holy hell what a concept a game that is fun. LvL progression is fast that way if I , heaven forbid, wanna play another class I can relatively easy and still lvl my other characters.

[Murgos]

...I literally burnt up a motherboard playing eq 1 b/c of all the cacheing to my hd.

Meh?  Thats like saying you wore out the tires on your car by having the air  conditioner on all the time.  Sure they are both parts of a car and wear on one is fairly congruent with wear on the other but they don't directly cause stress to each other.

The data that passes through your MB from your hard drive is not even 1/100000th of the data that passes through the MB during normal operation.

[WindupAtheist]

FIVE HUNDRED?

Ahahahahahaha!

*points at the EQ2 players and laughs*

Bwaaahahahahahahah!

[Murgos]

Every quest I had but one in WoW was kill X or get Y drops from X.  I woudln't get too obnoxious in my gloating.

[WindupAtheist]

Yeah, but when you have to kill X in WoW, it's like 15 of X.  And when you need Y to drop, every third or fourth X has one.

[Margalis]

Yeah, but when you have to kill X in WoW, it's like 15 of X.  And when you need Y to drop, every third or fourth X has one.

But then you move right onto another Kill X mob quest. What's the difference?

In WoW for pretty much every mob in the game there is a quest that is either kill them, or get stuff from them. (By - killing them!)

90% of the WoW quests are Kill X. I had exactly 2 quests that I thought were anything out of the ordinary at all:

1: Some guy is poisoned and you have collect some crap to heal him. There is a time limit. (Other than that it's just kill x again)

2: There is some treasure near some sunken ships, have to swim around and open some crates. (This was actually the best quest IMO, the only one that wasn't some variation on killing a bunch of whatevers)

[Murgos]

So I got to about 300 orcs and decided that I would rather just go ahead and finish up the quest so I started pulling big clumps of lvl 12 grey cons (I was nominally 17 having maxxed 17 but not allowed to advance until I finish the quest) .  I would run around with my bow and pull like 3 or 4 groups at a time  turn on attack and hit tab as neccessary.  I burned through those last 200 orcs in about 90 minutes.

I imagine a wizzie with some decent AE's could probably have been faster but not by much.

1 named down 4 more to go.

[HaemishM]

There is at least one quest in WoW at mid-teens level that requires the killing of around 60 mobs. Let us not gloat too hastily.

[WindupAtheist]

The funny part is, someone obviously had to sit down and write all these quests.

WoW writer: "Kill ten of these for some cash, then later kill fifteen of those for a sack of potions, and since I'm really feeling sadistic, at some point kill sixty of this other thing for a cool weapon."

EQ2 writer:  "Kill half-a-fucking-thousand before we ever let you level again.  Also, at the end, you get fined a lot more money than you've ever had so far, and you can't bank or craft right now."

Of course.  I mean, naturally.

[Soukyan]

Part of the reason you kill increasing numbers of mobs in WoW is so that you consistently earn experience from them and level at a fair pace. It is all part of the plan of their pacing in order to keep the quests in line with the increase of experience per level. I'm not saying I would enjoy killing 60 of a mob, but hell, if the mob type is in a "dungeon", chances are good that I'll end up killing that many just from crawlnig through it.

[Margalis]

There is at least one quest in WoW at mid-teens level that requires the killing of around 60 mobs. Let us not gloat too hastily.

60 Quillboars. I remember and got that quest and thought "F that!"

Kill 60 mobs is the quest equivalent of "go gain 1 level!" Wouldn't that be a great quest? Actually, now that I think about it Earth and Beyond DID have quests like that.

[murdoc]

Actually doing the quillboar's quest now just to gather linen for my tailor alt. Most of the quillboars drop 2-3 tusks so it's REALLY only like 30 you have to kill...


No, you're right. It sucks. Though I will admit, it was the first quest I looked at and debated whether I really wanted to accept it or not.

[Rasix]

There is at least one quest in WoW at mid-teens level that requires the killing of around 60 mobs. Let us not gloat too hastily.

60 Quillboars. I remember and got that quest and thought "F that!"

Kill 60 mobs is the quest equivalent of "go gain 1 level!" Wouldn't that be a great quest? Actually, now that I think about it Earth and Beyond DID have quests like that.

There's actually a quest you can do at the same time.  I think it's killing around 12 of two different caster types and like 8 of the melee variety.  You're usually done with the tusks when you complete it (you really only have to kill around 30).

There's a lot of quests in WoW that you can do concurrently.  Reduces the amount of frustration by leaps and bounds.