Echoes of Faydwer

[Surlyboi]

Truth be told, there's nothing really exciting on first blush with the armor I've seen, but some of the detailing is absolutely amazing. The gauntlets on the plate armor for instance have this feather etching effect that's insane. Maybe I'm crazy, but I kinda like that attention to detail over big, flashy, overwhelm-you-with-bling right off the bat dealies. YMMV.

There's still far too little variation I'll admit, but I like what I've seen for starters.

[Signe]

Two games in one day.  The EQ2 expansion and Gothic III.  Both will probably get ignored as I'm still hooked on FFXII.  Haven't even made it past the initial fight in NWN2.  Plus I have two betas that I've completely ignored.  For some reason having so many ignored games is making me stressy.

[Kryptec]

My biggest beef with EQ2 was that it was fucking boring.  Not just boring, mind you, but fucking boring, which is a completely separate animal.  The classes were just atrocious compared to EQ's classes; for example, EQ magicians running around with glowy elementals that were useful allies, EQ2 conjurers having little shitty beetles that didn't do crap.  Only having two cities was bad enough, Freeport being a nasty shade of mud-color for most of the decor wasn't any help.  The graphics were awful, that 'our engine is so 1337 that nobody can run it and everyone has to play on settings where it looks like shit' philosophy didn't do them any favors.  It all just came together in a way that said... ugh.

That being said, bringing back the unique cities for the different races is a very good step.  They contributed greatly to the original EQ's feel, I loved to travel and come across an unfamiliar city and go poking around it.

Now all they need to do is make the classes flashier and toss some of the crappy graphical elements and they'll be a very good way on the way to surpassing original EQ.

For now, though, if someone just did a ground-up DirectX 10 overhaul of EQ and tweaked some of the combat mechanics to be less 'autoattack, kick, bash, kick, bash', I'd consider it a vastly superior game to EQ2.

To be honest I was in agreement with most everything said once upon a time. I played for a little less then 2 months at launch then quit till around 4 months ago. Went back in and found the game to be vastly better then 2 years ago.

The classes are pretty distinct now from the get go. Playing a necro is definitely quite different from a mage to the point where the two classes (which were originally the same archtype when this mattered) are best suited to take on completely different opponents. Necros for instance rule against single higher level opponents while mages wipe the floor with small groups of mobs. And after playing up a necro to mid levels I've found the variety of pets available to be much greater then EQ1 necros ever dreamed of. Hell, for that matter my main in EQ1 was a BL and you have the same pet there from level 9 going on forever.

I find the quests in EQ2 to be superior and a fair bit more interesting then their counterparts in WoW. The collection quests alone are a great deal of fun (and often frustration) and the usual reward of a trophy of some sort to be displayed in the home is a nice touch if you like that kind of thing. Certainly the quantity of quests seem much greater then they did in WoW.

Graphics are still a little lacking. The quality is there but there's a lack of soul I guess would be the best term I can come up with. Granted I haven't seen the new areas in the expansion yet - this attitude may change. Freeport has really striking monumental architecture but as noted above the overall muddiness of the color scheme and the boring textures are such that I have a hard time levelling up an evil character cause I don't like staying around Freeport for any length of time. Part of what colored my dislike of the game at lauch was that my system then really couldn't handle the graphics. Everything was jerky and lag was soul destroying in places. My newer system now handles the EQ2 with only the occasional hiccup, something that wasn't as true with WoW where lag was an ongoing issue up until I quit several months ago.

Overall, I've found myself enjoying EQ2 now for a longer time than either of my two experiences with WoW. I enjoyed WoW greatly right up until I hit 60 with a character and then found myself with the choice of raiding or...... I don't seem to have a burning desire to get to the level cap in EQ2.

So overall the game is quite a bit better then it was when it first came out. It'll never be any kind of real competition for WoW in subscriptions but it seems to be a fairly good niche for me and I'll probably play it for a couple more years.

[Kitsune]

Yeah, the story of EQ2 was one of wasted potential.  It has an engine that can make beautiful settings... but an art department that made everything bland.  It has voice-acting and interesting quests... but a class system that made combat boring.  It has a great big world... but few actual points of interest to see in it.

Some of these things have been changed, some are in the process of changing, but I believe it's far, far too late.  First impressions make or break a MMOG, and I have never seen a MMOG that has risen above a bad first impression.  Just take Anarchy Online, its shitty bug-laden release doomed a pretty good game to languish in mediocrity.  EQ2 has all the seeds for a fantastic game in it, but I really doubt they'll ever get to bloom.

[Signe]

The wings and eyes are purdy.

[Surlyboi]

The eyes are a bit too buglike/alien but the wings are indeed pretty.

[jpark]

Yeah, the story of EQ2 was one of wasted potential.  It has an engine that can make beautiful settings... but an art department that made everything bland.  It has voice-acting and interesting quests... but a class system that made combat boring.  It has a great big world... but few actual points of interest to see in it.

For emphasis.

The class system is better but still weak.  When I play my templar I just can't remember all my abilities - they are numerous - minor - and lack significance.  I have a hard time identifying spells that are part of the same spell line but represent an upgrade.  This is low laying fruit they can address.

I wish EQ2 would copy COH in some regard on this - give classes fewer abilities - but increase their impact.

[Engels]

One of the reasons I stopped playing EQ2; too many fiddly bits with little discernable reason to use them. Basic 4 hotkeys for combat were sufficient, and consequently boring. Burrying your character in a mess of spells doesn't make your game less WoW-like if in the end you revert to using the same 4 attack functions as you would in WoW.

[jpark]

Now all they need to do is make the classes flashier and toss some of the crappy graphical elements and they'll be a very good way on the way to surpassing original EQ.

For now, though, if someone just did a ground-up DirectX 10 overhaul of EQ and tweaked some of the combat mechanics to be less 'autoattack, kick, bash, kick, bash', I'd consider it a vastly superior game to EQ2.

Have to agree here.  In many ways EQ > EQ2.

[Soln]

Yeah, the story of EQ2 was one of wasted potential.  It has an engine that can make beautiful settings... but an art department that made everything bland.  It has voice-acting and interesting quests... but a class system that made combat boring.  It has a great big world... but few actual points of interest to see in it.

For emphasis.

The class system is better but still weak.  When I play my templar I just can't remember all my abilities - they are numerous - minor - and lack significance.  I have a hard time identifying spells that are part of the same spell line but represent an upgrade.  This is low laying fruit they can address.

I wish EQ2 would copy COH in some regard on this - give classes fewer abilities - but increase their impact.

all that stuff requires lots of people to track and work at balancing.  I doubt SOE is looking to trim staff what with current attrition.  But yeah, they've got a lot of mouths to feed and keeping things complicated == content for them.

BTW, anyone on Oasis able to send me some money?  ingame name of "Scupper".  I'll Paypal for it if you have enough.  Won't go back without money for better gear and a horse.

[shiznitz]

Just a brief rundown of my first 30 minutes in EoF:

1) Boat from Thundering Steppes is less than a 10 minute wait. Sail for less than a minute, zone, sail along the cliffs of Butcherblock for about a minute to the docks.

2) Long, winding road up the cliffs from the dock area. Staying on the road brings Kaladim (60-70 group zone) into sight.

3) Jumped into a pickup group in Kaladim. This zone is very EQ1-ish. Mobs are thick and adds are common. I was getting pounded by equal level heroics while tanking although I am still wearing T5 armor at 61. Don't know how much the new mitigation changes were a factor.

4) After dying 5 times in 20 minutes, I decided to explore instead. The BB zone is similar to the original with some extra geography to explore. I found the Chessboard where it should be. Unrest (70+ zone) will be off BB but it isn't open yet.

5) Lesser Faydark (50-60 solo & heroics) is very different from EQ1. LFay has a pony express system to help people traverse it faster. There are a few heroic instances here. TONS of quest NPCs.

6) Logged after zoning into Gfay.

7) I like the cloaks.

In summary: The zones are HUGE and reminiscent of EQ1 but with their own EQ2 character as well. Just running around earns one a tons of explore exp. A guildmate of mine made 8 AA points from explore and nameds in 3 hours. That is insane. I made 1.5AAs just staying close to the beaten paths.

[geldonyetich]

I'm currently considering resubbing to either EQ2 or CoH.

Unlike Kitsune's impressions of EQ2 (see Nov 11th post) I've found it to be a pretty fast paced and fun game these days.  Much better balanced than at release, with ample support for solo play besides.

My issue with EQ2 is perhaps that it's a bit too big.  They merged the servers not from lack of players on individual servers so much as too few players to fill up all the areas they built in the game.  Plus, I'm a lowbie, I had purchased Kingdom of Sky thinking I'd enjoy the achievement system and fully knowing that it'd be forever and a day before I can access the cloud realm.  Now, here comes Echoes of Faydwer, a level 60-70 zone.  Guess that's one more place everybody's going to be that I can follow.

Hmm, but the whole thing can't be 60-70, right?  After all, they have a newbie starting area there.

[Bandit]

The EoF expansion is not a 60-70 expansion.  It is actually a 1-70.  You can theoretically level up to 70 in the expansion alone.  Now would be a good time to sub to EQ2 if your thinking about it, as many people are starting again using the Fae (including myself).  Seems to be a great expansion so far.  Keep in mind, for those who had some performance issues with older computers.....the expansion seems to work out a bunch of those issues, I can now run a full level up (very high performanced to balanced) with little issues. 

[Sky]

EQ2 is pretty high on the list to play when I build a new pc next year. I'm dying to crank the visuals and I left off my 30ish SK with a ton of quests ready to go, so I've got a lot to do.

Unfortunately, it's also in quite a line of games I'm holding off on until I build...I'll have six months of good pc releases built up! But I should be back next March or so, I think. I was going to play this autumn, but CoV got me in its clutches. Masterminds rock for soloers imo.

I also dispute Kitsune's assertion that the first impression is a deal-breaker. I hated EQ2 on release, and even though I still really dislike some of the same things (group-only dungeons, linked mobs, ^^ mobs, etc), it's a vastly improved game that I really enjoyed playing.

[Bandit]

I actually run with a 2.4 ghz, 1 meg ram, and ATI 850 - and everything in EQ2 runs smooth.  I have a bit of lag in a few graphic intensive areas (Kethelin, Qeynos Harbour), but overall I have no issues (just as a benchmark for you).  I could only imagine what that game looks like on High Graphics, as just moving to balanced is a huge step.

[shiznitz]

A guildmate did half of level 59 in less than 3 hours in Lesser Faydark, solo. Insane amount of quests in EoF. I ran through a greyed-out Crushbone castle (the outdoor part of Crushbone is part of GFay and not a separate zone.) Very cool zone as far as visuals but linear in terms of layout.

I plan to get a cloak with our guild emblem on it tonight and will post some screenies if they come out well. The cloaks flow well while running around.

[hal]

It really depends on how much you want to see grey and brown done well.

[geldonyetich]

Well, I went ahead and re-subbed to EverQuest 2.  My alt-a-holicism immediately flared up as I debated between a preexisting Illusionist or Swashbuckler.  I still am not entirely sure of the choice I made.  I'm now running around at level 27 without any access to Echoes of Faydwer wondering if I have an ice elemental's chance in Innoruk's realm of finding the necessary players to group with.  If I had the cash, I'd shell out for a copy of EoF and start a new character in Felwithe where it's probably a low level group gold mine right now.  Shoot, if I just had $15 to spend on re-subbing, maybe I should have gone CoH.  Retrospect is a merciless harpy.

[trias_e]

I just bought EoF a few days ago.  As a newbie that started in kelethin as a high elf paladin (who very well may betray to SK if it is reasonable to do so), let me say that graphicallly and quest-wise Greater Faydark is a pretty impressive level 5-15 zone.  I can only hope that the same amount of quality continues throughout the expansion.  I played before up to level ~24 as a freeport citizen, and the difference is night and day.  This is just far better done.  The class system no longer sucks (starting as your specific class is so much better), and there are copious amount of AA's you can start getting at level 10 (which adds an interesting dimension to the game). 

I don't plan on going to the mainlands until I really have to, and thus far there is no impression that I will be forced to go there ever. I'm sure some quests will draw me there eventually though.

[Bandit]

It really depends on how much you want to see grey and brown done well.

Do you really think that? I have seen many shots of Vanguard and thought that...but is that really a criticism of EQ2?  I really don't see it all, perhaps the city of Freeport, but other than that I just don't see it.

[Sky]

Hal just wants pink and chartreuse. I've never had problems with drab landscapes if the game is portraying a drab place. The world in general is a pretty drab place. Caves are drab. If you want to poke fun at EQ2's graphics, you're better off attacking the overall (lack of) design quality and flair, the boring and unvaried armor selections for most players.

[Signe]

I don't the the palette is particularly colourless in EQ2.  It's not as intensely bright and colourful as WoW... but it's going for the more realistic look, I guess.  I hate the character models and, like Sky and others have said, the armour is boring and I agree that the design of the world is mostly uninspired.   I also agree that Vanguard looks to have one of the dullest looking palettes I've ever seen which does nothing to motivate me to want to play it.  Although the huge cock rocks are amusing.

[Ironwood]

What do you expect from a Diku ?

Cock Rocks.

[shiznitz]

The cloaks just don't look as good in screen stills but here is the new horse animation (guild level 30 ghost horse, but all have the rearing animation if you <spacebar> while standing) on the boat to Butcherblock and you can see how the cloak doesn't drape stupidly. Cloaks have decent physics as to how they react to movement but the clipping is meh.  I bought a level 40 cloak for 9g. The higher level cloaks are longer and wider but I am half a level from being able to equip the one I really want and hope prices come down a bit.



And this is the climb from the BB docks

[Soln]

I dunno, this seems like more MMO bullshit to me.

solo'ers who aren't twinked should pack up

I don't get buying another EQ2 expansion when all I wanted to do by lvl30 was finish my armor quests and Stormhold solo.  Sounds clear that you can't do solo heroic mobs anymore, which is funny to me because I could never anyways.

someone someday needs to make an MMO which has the intelligence to scale encounters (instanced or not) based on if you are grouped or solo and change the payouts and rewards accordingly.  How hard is that? 

[geldonyetich]

The dude was trying to fight a ^^^ heroic solo.  With a priest class.  Even with a 7 level gain, that can be pretty iffy.

Solo content in EQ2 is complicated mostly because of the complicated consider system.  Heroic with one up arrow you might be able to take, but three up arrows are far beyond the efforts of most solo pclasses.  You start taking on entire groups of white con non-heroics and things are going great, but you run into your first heroics (or worse, epics) and suddenly the game is unsoloable.  Really, just like World of Warcraft, not all content is soloable and it's still solo friendly.

[Glazius]

I dunno, this seems like more MMO bullshit to me.

solo'ers who aren't twinked should pack up

I don't get buying another EQ2 expansion when all I wanted to do by lvl30 was finish my armor quests and Stormhold solo.  Sounds clear that you can't do solo heroic mobs anymore, which is funny to me because I could never anyways.

someone someday needs to make an MMO which has the intelligence to scale encounters (instanced or not) based on if you are grouped or solo and change the payouts and rewards accordingly.  How hard is that?

Can't be that hard, I hear Cryptic Studios is going to come out with something like that in another -3 years.

Once you get past the instinctive "throw more bodies at it!" response doing more harm than good, it's pretty worthwhile.

--GF

[Trippy]

I dunno, this seems like more MMO bullshit to me.
solo'ers who aren't twinked should pack up

I don't get buying another EQ2 expansion when all I wanted to do by lvl30 was finish my armor quests and Stormhold solo.  Sounds clear that you can't do solo heroic mobs anymore, which is funny to me because I could never anyways.

someone someday needs to make an MMO which has the intelligence to scale encounters (instanced or not) based on if you are grouped or solo and change the payouts and rewards accordingly.  How hard is that?

Can't be that hard, I hear Cryptic Studios is going to come out with something like that in another -3 years.

It's a lot harder if you have to take items into account.

[geldonyetich]

Canceled my subscription already.  That was a freaking bust.  Problem is my heroes are level 27 and most players around that level are in Echoes of Faydwer... or gone entirely.  Suffice to say, barely any players around (Antonica topped out at about 60 and it's downhill from there) lead to my realizing there was no real point to sticking around.  If I had the EoF expansion it might be a different story, but I don't got the scratch, so I decided to wuss out instead.  Well, I've got 29 days of subscription time left, maybe I'll change my mind.  Meanwhile, I'm tempted to find another $15 I don't have and throw it at Cryptic.  Yes, my budget is currently such that $30 is pushing things way over the edge and $55 is right out. 

Not that know why I'm posting this here.  Chances are those reading a thread about Echoes of Faydwer are either considering getting it or already have it.  I did get to try out the cloaks.  Not bad, but Cryptic put a lot more physics details into the capes of City of Heroes.  Not that it's really a competition, the games are so radically different.  EQ2 does massive, CoH does different.  My problem seems ot be that EQ2 is a bit too massive - there's not enough players to go around even on a "heavy load" server.  It was bad before EoF, now it's extreme.

[Soln]

that suks Geldon, I was also hoping to get into it.  But I'm also not buying EoF yet -- I want my game working well on my PC first and I want to be able to solo reasonably well before committing more money.  I've got 3 gigs of RAM, 3.2Ghz CPU a good ATI card (forget, but <2 yrs old) and the game *still* looks like shit.  Turning the specs up it feel like I'm running on my old Pentium, chop suey.  Going to have to investigate why.

[Falconeer]

The servers and the world is far from empty, you just have to choose the right server. Of course the new sensation are the new lands no matter if you are a new or an old player, but until a week ago there was a lot of people in every zone of Norrath as usual. And the expansion only added new players to the base.
If you are creating a new char I'd suggest to pick one of the most populated servers: Antonia Bayle being a sure shot and Lucan D'Lere (my server) being another good choice. They are not PvP sadly, but they are RP one, meaning not so much elizabethian speech but a notable lack of wowtard juveniles.
Of course those without Faydwer are the dropouts right now, that's understandable, but the game is by no mean "too large". That happened in EQ1 and they learned the lesson: zones are wider right now so there are no deserted zones. Sure more population could do but give it time to stabilize things and the usual platoon of mid levelers will start flooding all areas once again.
A few hours ago I logged in in the Fae starting area, it was about 6am EST, and a /who returned 77 players. GUess more insatnce are running in peak hours. Not bad. As I said, everyone's there right now, but that won't last. Old world is as good as the new one and some servers are healthy no matter what. Plus old fags can't wait to try their new faes in the old dungeons and watch them stylishly destroying old enemies.

I suggest you to try a different server. You could even come to Lucan and drop me a /tell (Ruri or Roori, high level and low level sides of the same medal), I'd be glad to help/join/fight together.

[geldonyetich]

Right now my characters are on Antonia Bayle, a server I had started over on deliberately awhile back in order to try to score higher populations.  Maybe I just need to take a better look around.  All I know for certain is I had been running around for about 4 hours and didn't manage to find a single group that wanted a level 27 Illusionist.

[Soln]

I moved with Bat Country to Oasis -- can you still character transfer?

[Falconeer]

Ugh, no idea about char transfer, and if Antonia Bayle *looks* empty, then it really means everyone is in fairyland, and I was wrong. Sorry :(

[geldonyetich]

It's not really "empty", but things are sparse.  I run across quite a few players running around or idling about brokers and  whatnot - EQ2 is far from a ghost town.  My complaint is more about grouping opportunities.  Active players at my level range are cut randomly between 33% - 66% of being in EoF versus not, depending on where I look and when.   So about half of the usual grouping opportunities aren't there right now.  Granted, it's kinda hard to tell on a RP server since about half the players are in /role mode and therefore hidden from level range searches, but those that aren't form a reasonably good point of reference.

As for the character transfer option, it seems to be down right now.  In any case, it isn't free (unless I wanted to go to a Station Exchange server).  I tried to get the exact price but it was hidden behind a "character transfers are down right now" screen.  I seem to recall that they charge something like $50 to do a character transfer, which is way out my budget.  I could maybe shell out for a 10th of that.

Perhaps it's the alt-a-holicism speaking, but maybe the source of my dissatisfaction has something to do with my character.  But if an Illusionist and Swashbuckler aren't adequately enthralling me, I'm not sure there's an EQ2 class that can.