EQ2 Goes Free to Play too

[Hawkbit]

I'd be surprised if EQ1 went F2P.  Their only subscribers are the diehards; I can't imagine many people go back to play it casually.  SOE would piss them off by going F2P, losing those customers AND the new customers that just aren't going to give a shit about a 12 year old game. 

I might tinker with it if it did, though.  What I want is the EQ, Kunark and Velious experience again, the way it was.  I'd play that.  Just that.  (and yea, I know of P1999, but it just isn't the same.)

[Fordel]

EQ2 looks like a highschool kids first attempt at 3D modeling and/or a shitty deviant art portfolio.

The fact they used new space age technology (at the time) to make their art look like shit doesn't win it any bonus points from me.

[HaemishM]

New Halas is a new user experience and it beat the shit out of the old Trial island. If you follow the whole quest chain, you get a decent horse and some good gear out of it.

[Kageru]

Was trial island the old new experience? I vaguely recall the original plan was you start off in freeport or queynos based on some light - dark choice and then could betray. But I guessed Halas was a modern experience since it looks like all the racial groups have been mashed into one space and the game-play is on rails. No horse so far (at level 20) though, which would be nice.

I also remember some terrible game-play decision where you'd go back and do other starting points noobie quests for bonus AA points. I assume they changed that at least. The latest expansion looks pretty weak too with mercenary pets, free to play and build you own dungeons. Which pretty much sounds like an admission they don't expect you to get groups or there to be that much new content for you.

And yeah, my only interest in EQ1 would be old-world tourism. EQ1 lost the world-building aspect and became about progression oriented expansions long before WoW/EQ2 came out.

[Numtini]

I think the island went away like three or four years ago.

[Ingmar]

There have been like 5 different new player experiences over the years I think.

[HaemishM]

Was trial island the old new experience? I vaguely recall the original plan was you start off in freeport or queynos based on some light - dark choice and then could betray. But I guessed Halas was a modern experience since it looks like all the racial groups have been mashed into one space and the game-play is on rails. No horse so far (at level 20) though, which would be nice.

The horse is the reward for the last part of a particular quest chain - and no, it isn't readily apparent that you'll get a horse when you start the chain. The quest giver is on a kind of cliff/ice battlements overlooking the ocean with two or three other guys on the cliff. He's a barbarian I think.

[Numtini]

These guys can't step in it fast enough. They had a huge 3-1 sale on station cash probably thinking they could kick some purchases for F2Players. Except you can buy the brand new expansion with SC, so the effect was that something loyal players preordered and paid $30 only two weeks ago was reduced to $10. The howling on the forums is monumental.

[Simond]

Only by the people who were too dumb to realise that there was bound to be a double-cash or better deal over Xmas.

[Kageru]

The above offer doesn't work if you use the steam wallet though. It displays the 3x value but doesn't actually apply it. Working as intended and misleading or half-assed implementation? who knows.

[HaemishM]

Working as intended and misleading or half-assed implementation? who knows.

It's SOE. Why can't it be both? 

[Rendakor]

Last time they did one of these 3-1 SC deals, you had to buy physical cards to get the benefit. Purchasing the SC online didn't work; not sure this time.

[Numtini]

I think what makes SOE truly great is they can manage things like offering a 3 for the price of 1 sale and actually irritate their customers by doing so.

[Ruvaldt]

Thanks for the heads up.  I actually had a 1500 SC card laying around from seven months ago and redeemed it/got the expansion essentially for nothing.  I haven't played EQ2 in a while, but I was two expansions behind and had nothing better to do with the card.

If I had bought the expansion for $30 though I'd be pretty pissed right now.

[Kageru]

There are some terrible voice overs in this game. And the "Dance" emote (one of the xmas mobs does it on a quest hand in) is perhaps one of the most painful things I've ever seen.

I'm glad to have my suspicion that I don't care about player housing confirmed. Pretty much the only reason to have one is because quests, especially the xmas quests, keep giving me furnishings and I need somewhere to store those (since the bank space is tiny). When I stop paying my rent hopefully it will all vanish into null-space.

Neriak was sort of cool though, probably better than the EQ version in a way that neo-Halas was not.

[Numtini]

People spent a lot of time decorating guild halls, particularly if you had a guild that did a lot of joint or PUG grouping/raiding and had outsiders visiting on a regular basis, but for private housing, I never saw a lot of point since nobody can see it.

[Kageru]

Guild halls I can understand, since it is a shared social space and you can put raid achievement tokens (though that would work better with a visible frontage). There's some attempt to provide the same interest with private residences where I can invite joe random to come and critique the fashion value in my object placement and arrangement but that runs quickly into the "who cares?" barrier.

[Merusk]

I thought you could flag houses as Public in EQ2 and it was the only way to place your own AH-type vendor mob or set yourself AFK a vendor or whatever the system was; Similar to SWG.  In which case decoration makes at least some sense.

[Numtini]

There's some functionality in houses, but most of it is for you. The one exception is if you want to save the commission on a purchase, you can go to the person's house and buy it direct. I think that's the only time I ever went to someone's house, to buy some very very expensive masters where I was saving several plat by not paying commission. I don't remember anything about the house though.

Alas, since those spells cost far more than the allowable plat you can have as a free player, the commission is rendered unimportant 

[Mrbloodworth]

Neriak is an abomination. Compared to old game zones.

[Sky]

I used to do a lot of business on the broker and went to many houses to pick stuff up. I loved checking out what some people had done, it's funny how much places reflect the owner.

I really enjoyed that aspect of the game.

[palmer_eldritch]

I thought you could flag houses as Public in EQ2 and it was the only way to place your own AH-type vendor mob or set yourself AFK a vendor or whatever the system was; Similar to SWG.  In which case decoration makes at least some sense.

That's how vendors worked at first but they got rid of it some time ago, thankfully.

You used to have to sit AFK in your house to sell items on the broker (ie the auction house). Being a successful crafter meant you had to leave EQ2 running on the computer for hours on end while your character simply sat in the house, otherwise you couldn't sell your goods. Totally insane, but gone now.

[Merusk]

Ah that explains why I remembered it that way.

I agree it was insane, but it's the same way EQ1 did it so they just copied the system over.  Ah the days of multiple accounts and one just sitting in the Nexus Bazaar /afk for days on end.

[Kageru]

Selling in a shared space in EQ1 actually had some community aspects, especially since they couldn't sell AFK. Not that it was a good system. And it had been replaced by an off-line system before EQ2 launched.

Neriak is an abomination. Compared to old game zones.

Really? I guess my expectations had been sufficiently lowered by new halas. Neriak certainly is an amazing character killer though, lots of blind drops into the insta-kill abyss. I thought the old Kelethin (noobie elves falling out of tree's) was bad.

[Numtini]

I bought at launch, fell out of Kelethin, lost my corpse, and quit the game until Velius came out.

[Merusk]

Selling in a shared space in EQ1 actually had some community aspects, especially since they couldn't sell AFK. Not that it was a good system. And it had been replaced by an off-line system before EQ2 launched.

You're thinking of the tunnel between EC and Oasis. This is not what I was talking about.  I meant the bazaar in the Nexus where you could totally sell AFK.

How can you forget the rows of dead-eyed merchant-mode people from EQ1, which had no timed disconnect.  People who would bump trade rivals to the back of the stalls until collision was removed for the zone. (Or did they make it so merchant modes couldn't be bumped.. I don't remember..)

I forget the /slash command but you worked like any other vendor and you set the price for each slot in your special bags.  I recall stories of many a non-careful person losing rare items because they mistakenly put them in their /trade bag for far less than market value.

[Kageru]

There was a similar noob killer in halas where you could either fall into the well and drown, possibly combined with the corridor too dark for any barbarian to actually see anything in (like a solid black screen).

No corpse loss in EQ2 though so that element has all gone. As are weather effects as far as I can see. Indeed EQ2 continues to confirm my suspicion that SOE have no sense of style and that EQ1 was a lucky accident at an early and innocent age in MMO's.

I thought they made the Bazaar capable of offline selling, but my memory is hazy. Though I do remember taking advantage of someone mis-pricing SOW potions.

[Hawkbit]

Bazaar is sill online only.  They added the capability for people to sell to your vendor at some time after I left.  You set x price and people can show up and drop stuff off.  I think you had to choose if you wanted to buy or sell for the allotted time, because they were different zones.  I think.

/baz

[Minvaren]

You're thinking of the tunnel between EC and Oasis.

Griff to tunnel! 

[palmer_eldritch]

EQ2 does have some beautiful areas. The outdoor zones from the Rise of Kunark and Sentinel's Fate expansions (eg Kylong Plains and Stonebrunt Highlands respectively) look really nice.

Most of the zones that shipped with the vanilla game, and some of the more recent ones, are horrible. It's like there's only a limited number of people out there who know how to coax the graphics engine into producing pretty pictures, and they're usually unavailable.

[Mrbloodworth]

Selling in a shared space in EQ1 actually had some community aspects, especially since they couldn't sell AFK. Not that it was a good system. And it had been replaced by an off-line system before EQ2 launched.

Neriak is an abomination. Compared to old game zones.

Really? I guess my expectations had been sufficiently lowered by new halas. Neriak certainly is an amazing character killer though, lots of blind drops into the insta-kill abyss. I thought the old Kelethin (noobie elves falling out of tree's) was bad.

Was not commenting on the level design, but more on the aesthetics.

[Ruvaldt]

The new Neriak is depressingly neon purple and dark.  The old one had a little bit of that, but they went overboard in EQ2.

[Kageru]

The population of the game seem to be in deep denial. "revamp all the original zones!", "TV advertising with a big celebrity". Surely the game isn't holding the subs to justify any of that.

The latest expansion seems to be mostly a dungeon maker and mercenary pets which is pretty much the developer telling the playerbase to do it themselves.

[Zetor]

Just how flexible is that dungeon maker when compared to, say, COH's Mission Architect? Can you write dialogue, add custom items (maybe not actual items, just quest items / scrolls with some text on them), customize mob looks (within reason, ie. using the game's own models) and behaviors (spell use, etc)? Can you have chained objectives (or any objective that is not "kill everything"), event-triggered spawns, etc? Is there incentive for players to play through custom dungeons, and is there any incentive to create or play anything other than a min-maxed "most loot with least effort" dungeon?

As an oldschool MUD builder and Mission Architect fanatic, player-created content systems are extremely interesting to me... even if the game they are attached to isn't the 'best thing around'.  

[Kageru]

I can't really answer that, as you need the expansion to make dungeons. The add for it is on youtube. I have been picking up tokens that let me place different types of mobs.

I can do them though, so I selected a dungeon that had a (SOLO) tag and entered a simple map with lots of props and mobs. My fresh L21 character was asked to pick a L50 monster to play as and started fairly easily killing mobs. Pretty easy,  dull (since it replaced all my skill buttons), no flavor, no coherent setting and massive amounts of xp (a level in about 20 minutes) for sleep-walking through it. So either I'll get banned for just having exploited the game or they learnt absolutely nothing from the CoH experience. Also some tokens I can trade in for stuff no doubt.

So, doesn't look too impressive.