EQ 'Next'

[Abelian75]

Yeah, EQ2's appearance really is in its own category of bad for me.  I can't think of anything I've seen comparable to it in terms of, uh, aesthetic appeal / engine sophistication ratio.  It's interesting that not everyone seems to see it, but I've heard enough people have the same extreme opinion that I definitely think it's a real thing.  A real, shitty thing.

[Stormwaltz]

I didn't mind EQ2's landscape when it was released. I thought it looked pretty good. I remember being impressed by the ocean waves in the beta tutorial.

The avatars, however, always had an unpleasant plasticky look to them.

[Maledict]

All I can remember are the sausage deers in the starting areas. Gods those things looked unpleasant and unholy.

[Strazos]

I just hope rogues are not utterly useless as they were in EQ1.

[Sky]

Retreating badger should really be the mascot for all new mmos.

It was for the conversation, not the game.

[Threash]

I just hope rogues are not utterly useless as they were in EQ1.

Hmm, I don't remember that at all.

[tazelbain]

Its just nice to have something interesting on the horizon. I hope it all works out but even if it doesn't, it's something worth talking about.

[Numtini]

On rogues, I don't remember DPS being a thing so much. It was all about mitigation, the holy trinity of tank, healer, and CC. You didn't worry how long it took you to whittle something down, just that you didn't get killed and lose a day's progress.

[palmer_eldritch]

On rogues, I don't remember DPS being a thing so much. It was all about mitigation, the holy trinity of tank, healer, and CC. You didn't worry how long it took you to whittle something down, just that you didn't get killed and lose a day's progress.

That's how I remember it. Because you were probably camping a room, you just needed to beat mobs quickly enough to beat the respawn, possibly in the corridors outside as well as the room itself. As long as you could do that, it.didn't really matter how long the fights took. What you worried about was not dying, not how fast you dealt damage.

[HaemishM]

Rogues were balls for the first year after EQ1's release because, like alchemy, many of their skills and bonuses were utterly broken and bugged but "The Vision" as espoused by Brad McQuaid didn't allow for shit in the game to be buggy. So rogues were "working as intended" which apparently meant they couldn't fight for shit and were absolute fucking liabilities in combat - but they could drag corpses! Then some fucking genius figured out that "oh yeah, rogue's backstab is missing a goddamn decimal point" or something, fixed the error and suddenly rogues were just ungodly backstabbing damage dealing killing machines with invisibility. Kind of like how "hell levels" were completely necessary due to the experience curve and yet somewhere after I quit the game, they were smoothed out completely.

[Numtini]

I forgot dragging corpses. *shudder*

[Trippy]

They could also open the locked doors in Sebilis

[Sky]

I forgot dragging corpses. *shudder*

Shoulda played a necro. Used to be such an awesome team with my wizard friend and his druid 'girlfriend'.

Until the master undead because a mana heal bitch. It was so easy to never go back to that game.

[Count Nerfedalot]

The scary part is you can't even see the shiny plastic skin in that particular shot so it could look even worse.

Or the awesome playdough hair! 

I've never understood how they could make a fur-covered Ratonga look as good as they did yet fail so spectacularly on human hair, or even on fur-covered Kerrans. I thought it was all about the textures, but maybe the model and animations played a big part as well?

[Merusk]

Yes.

Wish I could find the rendered image they released ca. 2001 of the high elf in the brown ivy armor.  It looked better than anything EQ2 actually ever produced, including hair, though the skin was still a bit plastic.

[Phred]

On rogues, I don't remember DPS being a thing so much. It was all about mitigation, the holy trinity of tank, healer, and CC.

Every high end guild and any guild with pretensions of aspiring to raiding wanted good rogues. Their dps was second to none except wizards for a brief time. The rogues no one wanted were the ones who's dps matched the tanking warriors.

[Falconeer]

Aside from personal preference, there was lots of goodness to be had visually in EQ2 when it came out but as someone else pointed out the general performances were simply terrible so most of it was hidden behind the "Max Settings" wall. Then again, it's easy to say it looks like shit now (and I know you were all saying it back then too) and point out the technical sloppiness but I think many of you don't really remember what graphics of MMORPGs were like in 2004.

I personally loved these screenshots back then (which obviously were not taken at Max video settings), and while I am obviously just feeding everyone's mock cannon here, I am gonna stand by my opinion. I am still curious about your screenshots of much better looking MMORPGs from that era.

 

[Ingmar]

Unfortunately all my old screenshots disappeared in a computer transition a while ago.

Your first screenshots isn't the worst thing ever but holy shit that 3rd one. Are you sure that isn't EQ *1*?

[Falconeer]

Unfortunately all my old screenshots disappeared in a computer transition a while ago.

Yes, but screenshots from WHAT GAME exactly?

[Fordel]

I see a Ray Trace vase in the first fucking screenshot. Am I being trolled? 


What came out in the same Era as EQ2? CoH? WoW? GuildWars 1?


Pick any of those, they'll look better and use computers from their present, instead of the theoretical future. CoH is probably the weakest one of that bunch.

[Ingmar]

Unfortunately all my old screenshots disappeared in a computer transition a while ago.

Yes, but screenshots from WHAT GAME exactly?

Games I remember liking better appearance-wise from the era would be GW1, CoH, WoW, and the re-done parts of DAOC from Catacombs.

[taolurker]

On rogues, I don't remember DPS being a thing so much. It was all about mitigation, the holy trinity of tank, healer, and CC.

Every high end guild and any guild with pretensions of aspiring to raiding wanted good rogues. Their dps was second to none except wizards for a brief time. The rogues no one wanted were the ones who's dps matched the tanking warriors.

Ahem.. Seriously it wasn't the Rogues that were the problem (except maybe pre-Kunark when bugged) the problem was with asshat players who didn't know how to evade to control aggro. People started hating rogues in groups sometime post Luclin regardless of DPS because 1. They were easy to squish even when twinked and 2. No twink Rogue ever knew how to evade.

I played a Rogue in EQ1 on and off, and it was a frustrating mess because of all the people who didn't know how to play. I was constantly told "no rogues" because of either aggro death worries, that I'd steal coin from mobs, or that they needed a backup healer more than DPS. Those who gave in and grouped with me know that none of those things happened, and realized that a Rogue required some skill just like being a Bard (and good ones of those were also rare).

I was frequently surprised that clueless players would ask me "Why do you disappear from combat for a split second every once and a while? Are you laggin?"... NO I AM EVADING. LIKE. I. AM. SUPPOSED. TO... SO I DON'T HAVE EVERY MOB FACING ME! This was especially frustrating when these were the same morons who were gloating about their twinked rogues.

[Sjofn]

GW1 was lovely, I remember being really impressed with how pretty it was and yet could still run really well. It also had dude models that were actually hot for some of the classes, which was amazing!

[Falconeer]

GW1 was really lovely, and it's the only one that I agree with you was way way better looking than EQ2. The other ones you mentioned... it's a subjective opinion. Feel free to post screenshots from your gaming sessions though. Anyway, GW2 was based on smaller instances, so for all I know could do things with graphics that open world games had a much harder time doing at the time.

About the "ray trace vase", that's a fountain with flowing water covering it (water came out from the top). It actually looked pretty impressive from much closer.

[Fordel]

I sincerely doubt it (on that vase). 

Like does the game even have shadows? How do you pretend to have realistic graphics without shadows?

[Falconeer]

As I said, it had shadows and they were actually amazing... if you had the juice to run them. I did not, hence my "flat" screenshots.

[palmer_eldritch]

Reposting this for anyone who hasn't seen it and wonders what EQ2 looks like on a modern computer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zas9mzFaHxQ

[Engels]

I'm with Falconeer; aside from the bad hair choices I didn't think EQ2's art was that bad. A bit overwrought, a bit too ornamented if that's a thing, but at least it didn't treat you like you were a child. It lacked a bit of imagination, but its not really comparable to WoW or CoH. Those types of games were divorcing themselves entirely from any sense of 'realistic' fantasy and were opting for a cartoon or comic style world. NOT THAT THERE'S ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT.

Don't get me wrong, the combat mechanics, quest system and the lore of EQ2 were a new low in formulaic gameplay. The computers available at the time of launch couldn't handle the engine for shit, but the art itself wasn't that horrible.

Different strokes, I guess.

My issues is that EQ1 was not quite entirely like a comic book, it kept one foot in 'realism' where as EQNext seems to be going the full Disney.

[Rendakor]

Regarding EQ2's system reqs, it actually ran on lower end systems than WoW did because of how low you could turn the graphics. I had an old laptop that would run EQ2 at like 10 fps, but wouldn't play WoW at all.

[Ginaz]

EQ2's character models were ok but the rest of it looked horrible IMO.  I played it about 2 years ago and just couldn't get past how awful the terrain looked.  And yes, I played it maxed (or near maxed) settings.  Still looked like ass.

[Sky]

I loved EQ2's engine for the most part. Some of the style left a lot to be desired (dose eyebrows!), but the lighting and shadows, the normal mapping? Pretty amazing for the time.

WoW had a strong style (if you were into that style) but the engine looked like shit.

I'm glad we're having this discussion again after almost ten years.

[Falconeer]

You are not supposed to care about this video, but last night I felt like going back to Starcrest Commune in Qeynos to find the "ray trace vase" and take a closer look at it, but turns out Starcrest Commune is unavailable due to some lore-related unrest so you just can't access it. I took the time to walk around Qeynos -actuallyy a very small portion of it- for ten minutes and while certainly boring to watch, you can still skip back and forth and see why some of us (well, me) fell in love with what felt like a real Fantasy city in 2004 as opposed to those depicted by some others more popular games.

While the game is now running on max settings (hence: shadows) it is still a 2004 thing. Believe it or not, if you didn't hate the style back then it did a great job at conveying the feeling it was trying to convey. Lots of buildings were accessible and they had so many beautiful details, like the deck of cards you can see about 30 seconds in. Also, this is taken at night and that's another thing that was quite amazing since cities were very different based on the time of the day. I wanted to give you all a piece of Freeport too, but seems like it's an adventuring zone now so I can't enter without being instakilled by guards 

[Mrbloodworth]

I'm with Falc. EQ2 at the time was simply stunning next to its contemporaries. Freeport, while brown, was incredible. I think EQ2 was one of the first games to use any form of bump mapping especially in the MMO area, and one of the first to have stencil shadows and multi-texturing. Art style aside, it had some unseen before vistas and areas. The years however have not been kind, and most things added after launch has some...interesting design choices that muddy everything that was was there originally. Particle Vert attachment? Crazy for the time.

When Eq2 went F2P though, I went back and looked, all the newer areas are just. Well, they did not try very hard to match the mood and style very well. Likely due to complaints about the lack of saturation in scenes.

[Sky]

Freeport was so great. Both the tone and the art really matched up well for the lore.

I also noticed after f2p there had been a lot of downgrades visually.

[Threash]

EQ2s contemporaries were GW WoW and CoH, and I would put it a distant third behind WoW and GW.  And i never played CoH so i can't even rule on that one.