EQ2 Goes Free to Play too

[climbjtree]

I've been playing EQ2 lately, and I realized exactly what I miss about EQ1 and AC and all of those games. I also realized why it's gone.

Groups aren't nearly as social as they once were. With quest hubs like we have now, all you do is load up on quests, run out and meet your objectives, run back to turn in and repeat.

Back when we used to camp the bandits in East Commonlands there was a lot of socializing going on while we waiting for the bandits to respawn.

Basically I've come to the conclusion that I'd rather camp a spawn with friends and just quest for items than use quests as the main form of gathering xp.

[Sky]

Bad gameplay makes for social gaming? That would explain facebook! 

Yeah, no interest in sitting around waiting to play the game in short bursts while nattering on with some nabobs.

To continue my comment from my last post, I kinda wish I had an open character slot to try to re-learn the game from scratch, because it's way too overwhelming at level 77.

[climbjtree]

I just leveled a Fury up to level 12 this morning and I'm currently runnin' around EC. I'm on Antonia Bayle if you'd like to join!

[Kirth]

To continue my comment from my last post, I kinda wish I had an open character slot to try to re-learn the game from scratch, because it's way too overwhelming at level 77.

its just like riding a bike. If you had to input a 12 button rotation to make the bike go forward a foot.

[RhyssaFireheart]

Sky - unless you have a virulent hatred of RMT, you can buy extra character slots on the Station Marketplace to try out a new character.

For grouping, my guild has a "family group" as it's called.  One of the players got his dad and brother to play and in order to not have things be too overwhelming, they throttled back their XP gain in favor of AA gain, so even after over a year of playing they aren't max level and are just taking it slow.  They pick a set night to group up and do quests or exploration and other times, if someone feels like playing solo a bit or just crafting, they aren't going to outlevel the rest of the group too quickly.  The veteran players have other characters they can play on to level faster if they like, otherwise it's all about taking it slow and socializing.

Personally when I do play (not as much recently) I don't pay all that much attention to chat channels because they either scroll by so fast (crafting channel) or they're filled with drivel and e-peen waving (80-89 and 90 when 1-9 overflows).  I keep up with guild chat and that's about it.

I'm on AB as well and been with an awesome guild (Safe Haven) for years now.  We're not raiders (although we keep poking at it) and recently had a guild move from another server to join AB/us (co-worker of a guild member) who are more into raiding, so maybe that will grow some more.

[climbjtree]

I'm nearing the end of my trial and will probably buy the game. I was looking for a guild, so I checked out Safe Haven and seemed like a pretty okay place. Pretty casual place, you say?

[RhyssaFireheart]

Yep, there's no pressure on anyone to do anything or to make a specific type of character to fit into some pre-assembled group makeup.  Play what you like, people are majorly friendly and generally willing to help out someone that isn't begging for help every two seconds.  We're also pretty cautious about recruits though because we've been burned a few times (got our shared gbank and harvest depots cleared out), so recruits have a month evaluation period before being promoted.  Just FYI.

If you do like what you've heard about SH, mention you know Darema and I'll pop in to vouch on the boards. :)

[climbjtree]

Right on. It's hard to socialize when you're on the trial, though I doubt I'll wait until it's over before I buy. I'm just shy of level 20 now as a Fury, though I'm not entirely sure I like the class. Seems like I'm a damage oriented druid.

Let's say you go full on priest, like a cleric or something. Are you still pretty well able to solo or are you reliant on groups to level?

[Ruvaldt]

I've never had trouble leveling solo as an inquisitor or templar.  You won't be able to tackle the same difficulty of encounters solo as, say, a necromancer or a shadowknight, but they can definitely solo for experience.  Inquisitors are better at it than templars, but they're both capable.

[Nebu]

I've never had trouble leveling solo as an inquisitor or templar.  You won't be able to tackle the same difficulty of encounters solo as, say, a necromancer or a shadowknight, but they can definitely solo for experience.  Inquisitors are better at it than templars, but they're both capable.

My main is a defiler.  Between the slow pace of combat in EQ2 and the slow rate of soloing with a defiler, I lost patience with the game.  Loved decorating my house though!

[Numtini]

Betray to mystic. We solo fine.

I loathe dungeon finders, but it's going to be very very easy to level alts. Dungeon XP in EQ2 is mad fast and always has been.

[Nebu]

Betray to mystic. We solo fine.

The point of playing a defiler was to NOT be a mystic.  How about they fix Defilers so they can solo better?

[Rendakor]

My Inquisitor was an absolute slaughtering machine last time I played. The Necro could more reliably solo ^^^s, but the Inq killed much faster and was much better at large groups. Even without the 100% melee crit ( ) he's still a badass.

[Kirth]

So the EQ2 foray into public quests are  in a eq kinda way. No auto grouping, difficultly level scales only after you fail a hard wave of mobs, reward system is supposedly based on some contribution model but I wouldn't be surprised if it was just random rolls assuming you were actually hitting things during the event. Its the kind of stab at a PQ system I would have expected 5 years ago but this is EQ2.

[Sky]

Still love the game, but I've moved on. Played with the new starting area a bit a couple nights ago with a new monk, just not pulling me in anymore. And my higher level characters just have too much shit going on.

[Numtini]

So the EQ2 foray into public quests are   in a eq kinda way.

I was told by my guild that contribution is based primarily on what you do on the head boss of the final wave. You can actually sit the rest out with no effect. Whether or not you get a super rare though seems to be random. You just need to reach a certain level of contribution to qualify.

[Rendakor]

I got an email telling me that my account was re-activated for the weekend, so I'm going to fire it up and check out the changes. I think they're also doing double SC, which helps if I decide to reup for a month.

[Numtini]

Double SC and double xp.

[Chinchilla]

I'm downloading it now to give it a spin.  I miss my EQ2 Monk that my F'ing wife took.

[Cadaverine]

I loaded it back up this weekend, and got my 26 Dirge to level 35.  I have to say, I have way too many abilities, and I hadn't really focused on getting AAs.  Many of the abilities were really kind of redundant, if not useless outside of certain scenarios.  I don't think it would hurt them any if they did a pass over all the abilities, and rolled a good many of them together, or just got rid of some of them.  Having to upgrade all those abilities was annoying too.

Other than that, and a few minor gripes, it's a solid game.

[Numtini]

I loaded it back up this weekend, and got my 26 Dirge to level 35.  I have to say, I have way too many abilities, and I hadn't really focused on getting AAs.  Many of the abilities were really kind of redundant, if not useless outside of certain scenarios.  I don't think it would hurt them any if they did a pass over all the abilities, and rolled a good many of them together, or just got rid of some of them. 

No, please keep the wow in wow. The number of abilities and other quirks are what makes EQ2 different.

[Chinchilla]

I just played for about 1 hr.  Please tell me that the free download client isn't as visually appealing as the regular client.  I really seem to remember EQ2's graphics being pretty damn good and what I just saw with the free client is pretty rough.

I gotta figure out what class I want to play that is free because I'm goofing around with a iniquistor, but my real passion is the monk which has to be bought.

[Numtini]

No clue about the free vs paid client, but having gone back to paid, time has not been kind and the graphics aren't nearly as good as I remembered.

[Rendakor]

My only complaint with the graphics is that the client is unwilling to render all character models in the 'High Quality' version or whatever (the max setting is 10 or something), so if you have 20 people on screen half of them are going to look like monochrome blurs. Everything else about the game still looks good to me, and that's after having played a bit this weekend.

[Sky]

No clue about the free vs paid client, but having gone back to paid, time has not been kind and the graphics aren't nearly as good as I remembered.

I'll echo that. I kept going back to the options panel to see if I missed some setting. Looked far worse than I remember. They didn't run an optimization pass or anything, did they? The lights and mapping, even the cpu shadows (which I loved) seemed off.

Also, character models for LoD includes NPCs. I was sitting at a campfire with a dozen NPCs and a player runs up. She took another step and popped into her high quality version, quite jarring.

[palmer_eldritch]

I just played for about 1 hr.  Please tell me that the free download client isn't as visually appealing as the regular client.  I really seem to remember EQ2's graphics being pretty damn good and what I just saw with the free client is pretty rough.

I gotta figure out what class I want to play that is free because I'm goofing around with a iniquistor, but my real passion is the monk which has to be bought.

Unless something has changed in the three months or so since I stopped playing, the graphics in the free client and in the traditional client are exactly the same. I had accounts on both types of server.

[Secundo]

Their downloader didn't work in Firefox mode. Once I spread my legs, whore style, and did it the IE way with every hole open it worked... I told them to go get raped in their peeholes with something seriously unpleasant.

Uninstalled asap.

[Sky]

You stay classy.

[Soln]

cant get the launcher to work.  I can't log into EQ2 directly anymore?  Do I have to use the Station launcher?

[Numtini]

I thought the original and station launcher still worked (for now), but there's an entire new launcher.

http://www.everquest2.com/download/everquest2-trial

Best advice is don't do the streaming one.

[Surlyboi]

The station launcher shits the bed every time I try to run EQ2. The standalone EQ2 launcher, even though it's looking ath the same game file location, works just fine. Nice job, SOE.

[HaemishM]

The streaming launcher client is ass on every conceivable level.

[shiznitz]

It is just baffling how what should be a simple front-end launcher cannot work.  Steam is effectively the same thing times 100 and it works great.

[HaemishM]

SOE.

[Soln]

ya its been elbow-jammingly fun trying to reactivate my old account as well.  So I guess I will try F2P.  But again, should I try the old EQ2 launcher (as just EQ2)  or the new streaming one?  The new streaming one ended up streaming everything again unnecessarily, since I already have the full client install.