Everquest II
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Aaron
Goonsquad Officer
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For a guy who played EQ2 at launch (but left for WoW a few months later and never came back), what are some of the main differences between EQ1 and EQ2? Is it mainly nostalgia, which I can understand, or what is it that keeps so many of you playing EQ over EQ2?
Also, as a WoW player, there are two things I miss soo much from EQ2 that I'd love to see implemented in WoW, and those are those shiny things you find on the ground, and the Lore type quests (such as gnoll study where you have to collect parts of gnolls to learn more about them).
Also, as a WoW player, there are two things I miss soo much from EQ2 that I'd love to see implemented in WoW, and those are those shiny things you find on the ground, and the Lore type quests (such as gnoll study where you have to collect parts of gnolls to learn more about them).
EQ2 just has worse gameplay than EQ, to this day. The progression servers help a lot, too.
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Ambiturner
Ssraeszha Raider
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Rhanyn
Blackwing Lair Raider
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I'm probably enjoying myself a whole lot more because I am playing on a time locked server that has only made it to the second expansion. Ability bloat got worse the longer the game went, and it suffers heavily from feature bloat the higher up you go in expansions, especially with the last half dozen. I played EQ2 for a solid 4 years and another year or 2 on and off, and if I try to play live I'm utterly lost, can't imagine how bad that is for someone that has never played before. EQ2 is a terribly flawed game that I just can't help but love. That love is pure nostalgia farming at this point, because there are way better games out there, but EQ2, especially in it's first handful of expansions, was the perfect mix of not WoW and not EQ1, set in Norrath. I can't play EQ1 anymore, the mechanics are too outdated, and it also suffers from feature bloat in it's live iteration. For all the fondness that I hold for the original, more modern MMO's have forever broken whatever sadistic tendencies use to make me love it, and I prefer to allow my fond memories be just that. EQ2 actually became such a huge game for me because it was my chance to get in on the ground floor, I didn't come to EQ1 till PoP, and always felt like I was behind or out of the loop when playing with my friends and guild. So when the second one launched, I jumped on it like a cheerleader stuck in a prison riot. Found a couple of amazing guilds through the years, a lot of good friends, and to be fair, those things are what I should probably give credit for my love of the game.
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Miele
Lord Nagafen Raider
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EQ1 for me is just too old, but honestly even EQ2 is in that category right now.
EQ2 was my game of choice in November 2004, in the european region WoW was due to launch only in February 2005, so it was either stay in EQ1 or change for the new shiny game.
I played it (even alongside WoW when it later came out) and went back for some long stretches during the years, to play through the expansion packs. The base game had its moments, Desert of Flame was quite mediocre, but with some awesome dungeons to explore that were really thematically immersive and a good main story questline. Kingdom of Sky was a blast in every aspect and I can't praise enough Echoes of Faydwer, which remains today one of the most fun expansion packs I ever played in a MMO, all things considered.
There are the issues: already during KoS and EoF the ability count was raising too high. My Shadowknight tank could cast 8 AoE spells in a row, 1 was from AA points, the rest were part of my AoE rotation. In Rise of Kunark this didn't stop, also the game somewhat changed. Solo mobs everywhere, no more linked encounters in the outdoors (and honestly I don't remember the indoors at all), I don't know, the feelings I had for the game changed and not for the best. It's when I quit, I didn't even make it to 80, nor did my friends.
I believe the location visuals, the immersion, the design of certain dungeons were fantastic, both to play and to just admire. Solusek Eye, Unrest, Nektropos Castle, etc.
I can say I liked EQ2 a lot, I still have tons of screenshots from that game (some are still on my old 17" monitor... 1280x1024 resolution).
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I remember using a common one handed weapon as a Berserker, because the devs didn't know how their game worked.
Grabbit Allworth
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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EQII is one of the games that I constantly find myself wanting to play, but never do for more than a day or two because I feel overwhelmed by so many different things.
If the player base was larger, I doubt this would be an issue because I could look up most of the answers to my questions, but nearly every Google search yields some old out-dated and mostly irrelevant information. And from my experience, most of the players in-game can't be bothered. I even offered to pay someone a retainer to be on hand to answer my questions and never got a bite.
Fuck wandering around feeling lost AND completely behind.
If the player base was larger, I doubt this would be an issue because I could look up most of the answers to my questions, but nearly every Google search yields some old out-dated and mostly irrelevant information. And from my experience, most of the players in-game can't be bothered. I even offered to pay someone a retainer to be on hand to answer my questions and never got a bite.
Fuck wandering around feeling lost AND completely behind.
Miele
Lord Nagafen Raider
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Completely agree, there are no resources, I don't even know if the game even has official forums and if they are populated.
Rhanyn
Blackwing Lair Raider
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It does have official forums, there is a presence there, though whether it is large enough to be considered populated is another story. EQ2's community has always been pretty interactive, just not always in a healthy way. Lots of old school drama, dick measuring, especially between a few different guilds.
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Oh yeah I remember EQ2 info being a pain in the ass to find, which is weird.
Say I don't know what's the situation for EQ1, but I've been playing FFXI the past week and obviously it's old as fuck and all, but they have some fucking excelent wiki where basically EVERYTHING is, maps with all the clickables and all the parts that aren't actually drawn on the ingame maps and the shortcuts and all that crap, classes have indepth guides on how to gear(which in FFXI means like 3-6 complete sets of gear for autoattacking/casting/using weapon skills/using one specific skill etc) and how to do their class quests, detailed quest steps including all the potential subquests you need to do first to get items to open that door or do this shit, monsters with their loot tables and their skills when relevant and tons more shit.
It's overwhelming in terms of how much shit there is to do, but at no point I feel lost. And thank god for the guides cause some of these quests are so fucking retarded, like the NPC tells you "go talk to some guy in Bastok" and that's it, and there's like 250NPCs in Bastok and you have to talk to just the one guy so if you don't know, you literally have to talk to everyone. Some of this shit I don't even know how people figured it out originally, like one quest where you have to kill 2 specific NPCs for their drops then trade them back to the quest giver to actually finish the quest even though at no point does he ask you for these items and if you don't he's just a whiny bitch after you've done what he asked you to do.
Meanwhile I remember playing EQ2 a few years ago and I had trouble finding even basic class or combat mechanic info.
Say I don't know what's the situation for EQ1, but I've been playing FFXI the past week and obviously it's old as fuck and all, but they have some fucking excelent wiki where basically EVERYTHING is, maps with all the clickables and all the parts that aren't actually drawn on the ingame maps and the shortcuts and all that crap, classes have indepth guides on how to gear(which in FFXI means like 3-6 complete sets of gear for autoattacking/casting/using weapon skills/using one specific skill etc) and how to do their class quests, detailed quest steps including all the potential subquests you need to do first to get items to open that door or do this shit, monsters with their loot tables and their skills when relevant and tons more shit.
It's overwhelming in terms of how much shit there is to do, but at no point I feel lost. And thank god for the guides cause some of these quests are so fucking retarded, like the NPC tells you "go talk to some guy in Bastok" and that's it, and there's like 250NPCs in Bastok and you have to talk to just the one guy so if you don't know, you literally have to talk to everyone. Some of this shit I don't even know how people figured it out originally, like one quest where you have to kill 2 specific NPCs for their drops then trade them back to the quest giver to actually finish the quest even though at no point does he ask you for these items and if you don't he's just a whiny bitch after you've done what he asked you to do.
Meanwhile I remember playing EQ2 a few years ago and I had trouble finding even basic class or combat mechanic info.
jsquirrel
Molten Core Raider
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For what it's worth,
Soloing Timeline is the quest guide as described above
EQ2Interface : EQ2MAP - Auto Updating Version [Official] : EQ2MAP - Auto Updating Version [Official] is your map with everything annotated
and
Class Discussion has all your class and combat info worked out (may be years old, but the foundations are still the same).
Rhanyn
Blackwing Lair Raider
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Yeah, I have to wait for them to get the next expansion out on Fallen Gate. Every time I kill a named spawn and don't get AA xp credit for it, I die inside a little. The xp curve is a little slow without some of the kill speed pickup from AA's as well, may have ruined it by playing so much during that double xp event.
A friend talked me into picking up the Morrowind expansion for Elder Scrolls Online on PS4 while it was on black friday sale, and god damn if that game isn't 10 times better couching it with a controller.
A friend talked me into picking up the Morrowind expansion for Elder Scrolls Online on PS4 while it was on black friday sale, and god damn if that game isn't 10 times better couching it with a controller.
Muligan
Trakanon Raider
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I sent my usual complaint to Holly with the expansion release to beg her to fix the ability bloat. I would love to go through EQ2 one more time but I simply can't with the 10 hot bars in mind. I'm completely willing to look over their stupid itemization and gear progression which annoys me to death. Hoping they at least addressed it. I despised farming currency / Tokens to get gear.
