Everquest II

Sylas · Jul 21, 2013

game and combat especially were atrocious at release, like 10 hotbars + mouse click bullshit by level 20. I'm sure the game got better but no doubt with ability bloat from 9 years of expansions has made it even more lolterrible. EQ2 is literally the first game I uninstalled during the free trial. Usually if I don't like something i'll say "meh, i paid for it, i got 30 days, maybe i'll play it later". EQ2 was "OMG GET THIS SHIT OFF MY HD NOW"

Excidium · Jul 21, 2013

Sylas_sl said:
game and combat especially were atrocious at release, like 10 hotbars + mouse click bullshit by level 20. I'm sure the game got better but no doubt with ability bloat from 9 years of expansions has made it even more lolterrible. EQ2 is literally the first game I uninstalled during the free trial. Usually if I don't like something i'll say "meh, i paid for it, i got 30 days, maybe i'll play it later". EQ2 was "OMG GET THIS SHIT OFF MY HD NOW"

Felt the same about EQ2. I was unlucky when WoW launched because there were no more boxes for sale even though I was in beta. Decided I should give EQ2 a go around after quitting EQ in the summer of 2004. The moment I got to qeynos and started to level outside the city I questioned my existence. WoW had more polish, more responsive controls and UI, looked better, ran smoother, and installed off four CDs instead of 9+.

Vinyard_sl · Jul 21, 2013

Sylas_sl said:
game and combat especially were atrocious at release, like 10 hotbars + mouse click bullshit by level 20. I'm sure the game got better but no doubt with ability bloat from 9 years of expansions has made it even more lolterrible. EQ2 is literally the first game I uninstalled during the free trial. Usually if I don't like something i'll say "meh, i paid for it, i got 30 days, maybe i'll play it later". EQ2 was "OMG GET THIS SHIT OFF MY HD NOW"

The EQ2 community calls that "skill" because they aren't pushing 1-5 buttons like WoW....they are doing over 9000 on 50 hotbars

Kreugen · Jul 21, 2013

With a demanding rotation consisting of "smash whatever comes off cooldown" that thankfully can be replaced by putting 30 skills onto one macro. The clickers will claim that this makes you bad no matter what the damage meter says.

An entire row of master's strike skills, lol.

Grim1 · Jul 21, 2013

Kreugen_sl said:
With a demanding rotation consisting of "smash whatever comes off cooldown" that thankfully can be replaced by putting 30 skills onto one macro. The clickers will claim that this makes you bad no matter what the damage meter says.

An entire row of master's strike skills, lol.

It's a shame that the combat is so over the top with hotbar bloat. I prefer EQ but there are some fun aspects to EQ2. A lot of it was with things like housing.

Not sure why but I actually enjoyed EQ2's version of housing, which in other games I couldn't care less about. Exploring the zones and some of their dungeons are interesting too. That wasn't enough to keep me in the game long enough to get to max level though, and still haven't gone back.

Falmer_sl · Jul 21, 2013

bixxby_sl said:
It's not that bad, there's a whole lot to like. You've missed the boat now though, population isn't good enough to enjoy the journey, youll be stuck solo questing which is a weak part of the game.

Pretty much this. Impossible to get a group for low level content even on AB nowdays, which is a shame. I enjoyed playing through the 1-80 content every couple years, installed the game again a few weeks ago and it's just completely dead. No one uses the dungeon finger, no one is ever LFG.

Jysin · Jul 21, 2013

AlekseiFL_sl said:
Dov was not bad when they have all that was Promised done, However DoV does not get pass amoung the raiders and casuals or hell myself like most cause Sillus is the Derek Smart of SOE fucked up Itemization so badly.

Little late to the party... just registered.

DoV itemization was THE reason I stopped playing. All loot was generic x,y,z stat and varying levels of "gooder". One specific slot would have the exact same stats from noobie gear to raid gear, but simply scale in power. Nothing at all in the high end raid game had special / unique procs at all. You simply had slots that you could adorn with whatever proc you liked (purchased or dropped). The biggest beef I had was the extremely minor gap between the Hard Mode vs Normal Mode raid drops. HM was exponentially more difficult, but still have the same cookie cutter itemization. It was the absolute worst I have seen in the history of mmo gaming.

At the time they tried defending the decision by claiming they could spend less time on itemization and more on content. Yea.. we see how well that worked out for you. Fuck that game, seriously.

McCheese · Jul 21, 2013

One of the most hilariously stupid and bad features of original EQ2 was that shared exp debt when people in your group died. The game had so many shitty aspects, and yet I really enjoyed the first couple of months. I enjoyed "rediscovering" Everquest, the housing was pretty cool, and soloing wasn't really a viable option compared to grouping. They should have stuck to their guns a bit more instead of WoWifying it, because all they succeeded in doing was creating a much shittier version of WoW, whereas before they at least had something fairly different.

Agraza · Jul 21, 2013

Yeah, shared debt was hella bad. Some dumbass pulls aggro and gets two-rounded? The whole group gets fucked. Result? Ostracize stupid fucks that put me in debt and become ultra-cliquey. The game was just full of negative reinforcement tied to learning proper behavior, and positive reinforcement tied to completely random nonsense. Like platinum chests in rivervale had some of the best loot in the entire game and originated from trash. Derp. EQ2 was just so so bad on release. Nowadays it's not completely terrible, but the ship has sailed.

Jysin · Jul 21, 2013

Do you forget the locked encounters? That was THE #1 biggest mistake of release EQ2. Running by a newbie out in Antonica who's about to die? Cant heal the poor bastard or kill his mob for him. Just sit and watch him helplessly die. Let's make this "MMO" as socially challenging as possible.

Shared Exp Debt was probably #2 no doubt. It was most annoying when you added a new player to your group and he/she would die making his way to you. Add in my complaint #1 and you see where I am getting at.

Agraza · Jul 21, 2013

Group heals cut across entire zones, so we actually encouraged people to train to us while the templar kept him at 100% with group reactive (absurdly OP, got nerfed more than once), but that's at the high end. At the low end we didn't know any of that and definitely got hit by someone's death before he ever even got to us. That was shit.

Fingz_sl · Jul 21, 2013

I'm playing a bronze account coercer at the moment. Just stay out of all the old content. I needed some minitors but didn't realize the beetles where place holders and you had to kill beetles to get minitours to spawn. Holy crap. Then in many old areas it's common to put the quest givers on one side of the zone and the quests on the other. "Pete told ye to come see me did he? Go back and tell him I need the box."

bixxby · Jul 22, 2013

The proper way to play EQ2 is to just grind mobs or use The Golden Path. Buy some plat (it's gotta be worth about as much as Zimbabwe bucks these days). Twink an SK or Paladin with mastercraft gear and just make dungeons your bitch. Otherwise just play something else.

qwertyqweqwertwqert · Jul 22, 2013

bixxby_sl said:
The proper way to play EQ2 is to just play something else.

fixed

Kreugen · Jul 22, 2013

EQ2 and Vanguard are interesting case studies because they represent the only attempts at a AAA mmo built from the "because FUCK YOU" pre-WoW paradigm of hardcore nerdism that carried over from MUDs and such. And they can both be held up as shining examples of why "because FUCK YOU, that's why" won't ever be the focal point of a big budget MMO ever again.

And the only reason I care is because EQ2 does have some pretty cool and unique things buried under a mountain of shit. But mostly it is a huge pile of lessons of what not to do.

Convo · Jul 22, 2013

How can you ever use VG as a case study when it was tainted during testing? People who do are not looking at the totality of the circumstances. Unless we are talking not to release an unfinished game and crazy high system specs for the times?!

The running around questing treadmill exists in every game it's a terrible feature.

Sylas · Jul 22, 2013

Kreugen_sl said:
EQ2 and Vanguard are interesting case studies because they represent the only attempts at a AAA mmo built from the "because FUCK YOU" pre-WoW paradigm of hardcore nerdism that carried over from MUDs and such. And they can both be held up as shining examples of why "because FUCK YOU, that's why" won't ever be the focal point of a big budget MMO ever again.

And the only reason I care is because EQ2 does have some pretty cool and unique things buried under a mountain of shit. But mostly it is a huge pile of lessons of what not to do.

eh, at one point EQ2 maybe was this, you can kinda see it, but by at one point i mean in alpha/design stage. And then WoW's very public and much lauded series of beta's began and you can see clearly that someone said "oh, shit" and then began trying to copy and "one-up" as many features of WoW as possible while not having a clue about why they were copying them or what it was about those features that people liked so much. EQ2 at launch has the very special place of being the first WoW clone, a heroic feat considering that it rushed it's release and skipped the polish stage just to get out of the gates before WoW. Again, copying shit without knowing what it was they were supposed to be copying. That "polish", iterated upon again and again design/play testing being one of the main features that made WoW good.

VG. If you had a billion dollars and zero fucks given about ever recooping your investment VG could have been the greatest game ever. It would have sat in development for several more years of "Vision" design without any whining/feedback/terrified investors demanding WoWifying to recoop costs and it would have been epic. That didn't happen and thus it was what it was and not what it could have been.

qwertyqweqwertwqert · Jul 22, 2013

Vanguard wasn't that far off imo. It took a long time to tidy up but only because SOE had a tiny skeleton crew of about 4 interns working on it. I remember reading somewhere that Sigil had only spend something like 50 million on it so far, (Rift was multiple times that). Had MS not bailed and the full Sigil team kept working for another 6-12 months, it could have made a world of difference.

I still would have been disappointed though. But I think it would have been popular with a good population. At the time it was a really good sort of WoW-Advanced. It had the exact same interface and lots of the same mechanics, but it was just technically better and tougher and more advanced. I think that's what they hoped, to catch a million or so former WoW players who had grown out of WoW, and maybe a few hundred thousand former EQ players who were refugees. If they had the time to polish it and finish off some of the missing content, it would have been a serious contender.

bixxby · Jul 22, 2013

It could have been a contender if everything went the opposite of how things actually went. Sounds like it showed some real gumption & promise.

Quaid · Jul 22, 2013

bixxby_sl said:
It could have been a contender if everything went the opposite of how things actually went. Sounds like it showed some real gumption & promise.

To this day, Vanguard healing classes are the best (fun, engaging, powerful, diverse) of any MMO I have ever played.

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