EverQuest 2 NDA Lifted

[YellowKing]

SOE just announced that the EQ2 NDA has been officially lifted. In addition they've revealed they've let in 30,000 beta testers since July and plan on adding more in the coming days.

Sorry Arkon, didn't see your post in the other thread.

[Arkon]

heh np YK... I figured that would be a good place to put it.

[Raven]

Early comments do not look promising.

[Animus]

Early comments do not look promising.

Hmm, yea. Not good at all. That kinda bums me out. As a side note and not to sound bitchy, but when are we going to start using Road to Gold for unreleased games? That forum's nearly dead for no reason. EQ2 and WoW should give us plenty to talk about, people just keep doing it in PGBT.

[AgtFox]

I agree and have moved every thread I saw on the first and second page in PC Gaming relating to games not yet released over to here.  Let's try to keep upcoming game discussion here and already out game discussion in the PC Gaming forum.

[Raven]

Heh, I think the mods will sort it out.

At this time, there's probably not enough threads to deserve having more than one forum, anyway.

[YellowKing]

Early comments do not look promising.

Can you please point me towards some of these?

[Raven]

Not to be snarky, but just check out any of the major eq2 forums.

Hell, I posted that link from jaded gamer that had all sorts of alarm bells in it.

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To be fair, much of these people are just offering opinions, and I'm sure many beta testers disagree. Plus, EQ2's class balance problems are certainly not unique. Every class based mmorpg has had difficulty balancing classes, included WOW.

I think eventually, SOE will get everything straightened out. Just not this year. EQ2 might be a game that needs a few months of post launch tweaking to get right. Then again, you can probably say the same thing about WOW.

To each his own, but I think initially I'll play WOW, because Blizzard is letting me beta test their game, and I prefer to go with the game that I know I'll enjoy, as opposed to the game that I might enjoy.

[YellowKing]

Thanks Raven.

I wasn't trying to be a wiseass either, I truly wanted to see what negative points people were bringing up.

From what I've read some of them are valid and some of them are not (surprise, surprise). The opinions seem to be all over the place right now. I've never, ever, ever, ever seen a MMORPG that beta testers thought was finished though, so I tend to dismiss any rants of "the game isn't finished!" and focus on recurring themes.

I think WoW has an advantage over EQ in the praise vs complaints category simply because they're not trying to produce a sequel to an already popular game, nor have they made previous MMOs. EQ2 has to contend with people who hate the game just because it's SOE, or hate the game because it's too similar to EQ, or hate the game because it's not similar ENOUGH to EQ. That's three factions of negative testers right there that WoW doesn't have to contend with.

The common threads that I think are probably real issues at this point (since they're brought up time and again, even by "positive" testers):

- Class balance (or lack of differentiation among classes)
- System performance
- Crafting
- Content for evil races

Class balance I don't have a doubt is an issue - it's an issue in every MMORPG I've ever played at launch (and usually for many months afterwards). I'm curious to see, however, if some of this complaining goes away as people get into the post-20 levels and get to choose their final subclass.

System performance - I've only seen EQ2 running on a nice system, so I can't comment on this. It ran fine on that system even with a lot of the bells and whistles turned on. There is a lot of loading, however.

Crafting - I'm really up in the air on this one. My friend in beta is on the fence as well. He's just not sure how tedious it's going to be yet, and we probably won't know until we get a lot of crafters in the game churning out low-level resources. Right now crafting largely depends on resources crafted at a lower level, and it can get quite complex and lengthy to make a higher end product. Just to make a 6-slot bag requires pristine resources that you can't just buy off a vendor - you have to buy medium quality resources, THEN turn them into pristine resources, THEN make your bag. This level of depth is going to be loved by some and despised by others. I don't know which way I'll fall yet.

Content for evil races - It appears from what I've read that the evil races around Freeport feel that Qeynos offers more fun zones and content to interact with. I have not played Qeynos yet so I don't know for sure. This one is probably the least of my worries, however, since content is easy to add post-launch.

The two games (WoW & EQ2) are going to appeal to different types of gamers. And like you, Raven, I'm going to go with the game I know I enjoy rather than the one I might. In my case it happens to be the other way around, but I think between the two games everyone can find a good solid MMORPG they'll be happy with.

[Rhinohelix]

Sorry, YK, I somehow managed to miss this post when I posted the almost exact word for word topic 45 minutes later.

Most of the complaints I have read come from issues issues that have either been resolved or are  easy to resolve before launch for the most part (lag, solo mobs, freeport lacking) or come from the fact that it is  EQ2, not *EQL2*.  I have read similar things posted by old guard EQL people for a while, not to name names, on private forums and it seems to be a recurring thread that given their investment in the old system, the new one seems to be lacking.  And it is, in many of the things that drove people away from EQ originally.

I don't know that I like what I hear about the class balance within the archtype system, although I was told in an IRC chat last night by someone who was positive on the game that it compared very favorably to the CoH system.

One thing I can't seem to get over is my distaste over the break up of the main continent.  One of the things I dislike, and I know this is just odd to me, about WoW is the shape of the land masses.  In WoW the continents look like frikkin chicken strips.  Please!  The Shattered Lands aren't quite as bad but in general it bugs me.

The Crafting sounds pretty good.  At least it won't be boring.  I do wish they would bring back the unattended vendor.  I would think that they would have put in a vendor you could buy for a large marketplace, and reduce the need for PC presence.  That is one part of SWG that seemed to work right.

I am very excited about the game.  I have some reservations but time (and hopefully a spot in beta!!;) ) will tell.

Rhino

[Rhinohelix]

I see some bad comments, but I wouldn't say that the majority of things I read are bad.  In fact, I see very few all negative reviews.  Most of what I read are "the game has issue x, y, z but it still rocks."  Here is a fairly evenhadned review from the main forum and the thread which contains lots of good feedback, one way or the other.

http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=general&message.id=215842

Rhino

[Raven]

In WoW the continents look like frikkin chicken strips.

Arrgh, now that image is burned in my brain  :shock:

[Arkon]

One complaint I have heard is the quest system... I don't get people... they bitch because everquest had very little questing... now EQ2 has a ton of quests and people say it is too tedious to have to talk to npc's and get quests.  I got to freeport, walked around the different sections of town, talked to npc's, learned the layout and got a ton of quests, around 40.  I went out and started doing quests, then a few levels later, I had completed maybe 30 of the quests requirements but needed to return to the original npc.  So I go back and I do turn ins, get rewards and get new quests.  It wasn't tedius at all.

[Rhinohelix]

I read that they are about to implement a system to organize quests and have the guards provide directions/provide quest giver locations in the quest log.

Rhino

[Raven]

I bet that EQ2's quest system is only tedious compared to WOW's quest system.

WOW's quest system kicks ass.

[Arkon]

Explain what you would think would be tedious?  Personally the systems are very similar, other than I don't think the journal has a limit in EQ2.  Quests are organized in the journal by zone they originated in.  They are color coded to indicate difficulty.

[Ascendent]

*chuckles* the problem is people get defensive. These are just games. But everyone feels it necessary to defend their game. I love WoW and I saw the graphics for EQ2 and they didn't appeal to me. But that doesn't mean EQ2 is a bad game? No just means it isn't the game for me.

So how about a bit of honesty here guys. With WoW I hate the slow travel. Characters run so slow. Only certain classes have abilities to move faster, rogues, hunters, warriors the rest of us have to slow run.  I stay out of Stormwind just because of that easily a 10-15 minute run to get to where I need to thats just from an adjacent zone as well.

Ascendent

[Rhinohelix]

This was posted by John Smedley on the main boards:

I wanted to address a few of the issues I've seen raised here. We've been beta testing EQ since July, and it's really been exciting to get to see the discussions that go on here. Our developers really do pay attention to these boards and a lot of the comments that our testers have made have resulted in changes to the game while it's been developing. Even if you don't see responses to every thread, rest assured that this feedback is vital to EQ2.
 
I wanted to directly address a few concerns that people have:
 
1) Lag - the team is hard at work addressing the lag that's seen in a few zones (Antonica and Commonlands are the main ones). They know exactly what the problems are and are simply banging down the list addressing them. This will go away soon. We have very deliberately been pushing larger numbers of people through a smaller number of beta servers to specifically handle performance issues on the server.
 
2) Class Diversity - One of the things about EQ II that everyone should realize is that it is NOT EverQuest Live... nor is it intended to be. This isn't watered down EQ, EQ Lite or any such thing. It's just a fundamentally different experience from the ground up. It's designed to grow from less diversity at the lower levels to much more diversity at the higher ones. We think that we've been able to capture the soul of EverQuest and add some new and interesting twists to the overall experience. We've focused a massive amount of attention on Quests and storyline around the different classes.. and what we're seeing is the testers seem to like that focus. Our goal is to get players through the lower levels of the game quickly so that they can reach the point where the classes really diverge.   We have more distinctive class features that we'll be adding in the days and weeks ahead (traps on chests were just added for example). The team is working around the clock adding content and is this is really the fun part for them.. getting to make new and unique skills and abilities AND ways to use those in the game.
 
3) High-end spec - I've seen a lot of posts about how the game is pretty CPU and graphics card intensive. One of the things I've been the most pleased with is the amazing amount of options we have that can give the players the ability to fine-tune the frame rate for themselves. We run well on lower end machines when you turn down things a few notches. We've made this very simple for the players to do, and we have a utility that can check out the players machine and reccomend the best specs based on the results. Our thinking on this is long term. We wanted to make an engine that would tax even high-end machines *NOW*.. because we're in this for the long haul. When you buy a machine a year from now, we want you to be able to take advantage of the speed increases in both graphics cards and CPUs. I feel like this is the right way to go.. we don't want to look outdated 3 years from now.
 
4) State of the infrastructure - we have 4 Beta servers currently accessable to the public - a total of 22 are up and running, but most are not viewable by the beta testers for now (this will be changing shortly).
 
5) Station Players - I know many of you saw that IGN preview of Station Players (our new web based community tools).. we'll be opening this up to the beta testers sometime next week. It's a pretty amazing collection of tools and fun stuff for our players. We've spent a lot of time focusing on how to help the community with tools for  managing guilds.. a knowledge base of items (the list actually grows on it's own as new items are discovered..), player web pages. I think what we've got is pretty cool, but you be the judge.
 
6) Misc. Bugs - remember, we're still in Beta. Obviously there are bugs, but the team is fixing things at an amazingly fast rate right now. Anyone that wants to can feel free to post the patch notes from the past few months. See for yourself!
 
John Smedley
President, Sony Online Entertainment
 

I am amazed to find this level of developer support.  The last time I have seen anything like this was  when McQuaid was posting regularly at the beginning of EQ.  That involves a big IIRC, though.

Rhino

[Eightball]

I'm so split on EQ2 or WoW.  I'm seriously torn.  I have played WoW for almost a year (since undead push in alpha).  I've experienced a lot of the game, and it's really quite good.  It's just not as good as it used to be as time/moneysinks were added (see durability) and some mechanics (see the class rebalancing based on PvP whiners) have been added.  For someone who starts the game now, they'll play a fantastic, live game that is a great experience.  For me, I still think about what it used to have.

EQ2 is more of the traditional high fantasy game, which resonates with me more.  I also haven't experienced any of EQ2 while I've experienced a LOT of WoW.  I remember really loving EQ, but I'm not able to devote the time for an MMORPG as I did for EQ; it just needed too much time.  I also remember SWG, and though I know they are different games and developers, I still have a Sony burn.

I have them both preordered.  What the heck am I going to do?

Must be playing a different WoW than I have been playing.  Warriors have no ability to speed up travel inherently.

Druids get travel form, and Shaman get spirit wolf, Hunters have a bonus to movement speed.  Rogues get to sprint for 10 seconds every 10 minutes (iirc) which is an extremely minor run buff.

And there's a fantastic travel system in place between cities.  BUT, running in some zones is f'ing awful (Duskwood is a great example).  I will say this; it gets MUCH better when you get a horse.

[Ascendent]

Don't they get that speed burst charge move? Swear I've seen it.

Ascendent

[EngineNo9]

The Taurens are supposed to get the Plainsrunner ability, but that is either a higher level skill or wasn't in when during the stress test.

[olaf]

That is typical SOE.  Lots of promises, but nothing you can hold them to.

olaf

[obb]

Ah, here's the confusion:

Charge is an attack move.  Can only be used on a target to initiate combat.  Not a travel spell, as you need to hit something with it to use it.  And once you begin combat now, it's unusable for balance reasons.

The life of a Warrior involves much walking till mounts or plainsrunning.  
Warlocks have their summoning rituals (only to bring people to them tho) and a free mount at 40.
Paladins get a free mount at level 40

The other classes have nicer transport
Mages get Blink and Portals
Druids get travel form
Shamans get wolf form
Rouges have sprint
Hunters... movement bonus

Priests have some sort of levitate spell... anyone know whether this is better for travel?

[Slappy]

Two things raise major alarms.

1. Bugs this late in the game.

2. The comment he said about this not being EQ live and a completely different experience. This sounds like Asheron's Call 2 all over again.

[Valael]

I am amazed to find this level of developer support.  The last time I have seen anything like this was  when McQuaid was posting regularly at the beginning of EQ.  That involves a big IIRC, though.

Rhino

What, because they made a post?  Until the problems are gone, it means nothing.  Blizzard's community managers make posts like that quite often.

[DireAussie]

I am amazed to find this level of developer support. The last time I have seen anything like this was when McQuaid was posting regularly at the beginning of EQ. That involves a big IIRC, though.


 

What, because they made a post? Until the problems are gone, it means nothing. Blizzard's community managers make posts like that quite often.

Yeah, usually you see the big names come out and post some "damage control" posts just before release that are filled with PR.


>That involves a big IIRC, though.

No it doesnt     Head over to the Vanguard forums at http://www.vanguardsoh.com/forums, Brad posts there several times a week under his character name "Aradune Mithara".  This game is still years from coming out.  Its got the most number of posts by developers I've ever seen in any official forum.

[Falcon554]

Well I made my desision, and ill be playing EQ2. Haveing played WoW since alpha (no where near as much as eight has) there are things in WoW that really bother me. Now EQ2 might blow to but Never played it so I really dont know

[Hetz]

I'll be playing EQ2. I've played WoW for months now and it really isn't my cup of tea. I haven't been on the EQ2 beta though, so I have no idea if it sucks or not. All I know is that I LOVED EQ, so that is good enough for me.

[Destructor]

Well I made my desision, and ill be playing EQ2. Haveing played WoW since alpha (no where near as much as eight has) there are things in WoW that really bother me. Now EQ2 might blow to but Never played it so I really dont know

So, here's my question - why don't you like WoW?

Personally (as I've played both, although I stopped playing WoW as of late thanks to me getting into the EQ2 beta), both are really good games, and I see both succeeding.

But, somehow, EQ2 is drawing me in more.

Most of the problems of EQLive have been fixed. You no longer need the 'holy trinity' just to get anywhere in the game, crafting is actually useful (and is almost fun now), the graphics will look fantastic a year down the line (thanks to no current generation card being able to run the game at max detail and remain playable), and I've yet to run into any giant timesinks of the game.

Yes, their servers need a bit of tweaking (the Commonlands and Antonica, absolutely giant 'zones' that are at least (if not more) as big as the Karanas were in the original are horribly lagged at times, but they also easily support 200-300 people in the zone and still provide more than enough hunting spots for everybody.

The only true issues that I can see is that you'll really need a good (X800 or 6800 level) graphic card and 1gig of RAM just to play the game as the developers designed it - pretty. The character models are fantastic (although they need more diversity of facial hair/skin tones/hair badly), the reflections are amazing, and florna/fauna dot the landscape all over.

Any questions/concerns about EQ2? Ask away.

[Osprey a.k.a. Gollum]

Ive never played a EQ game. That being said I'm a little interested in EQ-2 but the thing that will keep me from even trying it out is the steep system requirements.

Now I know I've fallen WAY behind in the upgrade cycle but do you think there will be many others who will pass on EQ-2 in favor of WoW because of the ability to run it well?

I'm not only excited about WoW because I can run it but I would give EQ-2 a closer look if my system could handle it.

The EQ-2 is better than WoW or vice-versa threads really is non-productive.

I much prefer to see threads that read: "This is why I love EQ-2"(or WoW).

But anyway, I think its a good Fall to be a MMORPG freak...Win, win situation me thinks...

[Falcon554]

Well my biggest problem with WoW and this is going to sound crazy is with its quest system. There great dont get me wrong its great to have stuff to do other then just hunt but I think its geared to much to questing for my tastes.

I played in the alpha and some beta and never seem to beable to group at all, either eveyone had done the quest or they were in groups already so I ended up just soloing almost everthing and that was not fun at all. I like the way the game looks and runs smooth as silk but something really put me off in those early days for some reason. Having never played EQ im looking forward to EQ2, again it might suck all but I have no idea and I sure am looking forward to playing something new and seeing new places.

For me getting into the WoW alpha when we did (almost a year ago) might have been the worse thing, Wow to me is not new, even with all the changes its not new, its a case of been there killed that.

[EngineNo9]

I have a real pet peeve with limited character customization (especially in an MMOG with tons of other players!) and was just wondering if anybody could elaborate on how few EQ2 has?

I personally think that MMOG's and RPG's need to adopt some serious character customization like the EA Sports titles or Blinx 2 (and I'm sure other games I'm not aware of).  If I want a short, fat, huge-headed human with a big, red beard I damn well want to be able to role-play one!

[Raven]

Well my biggest problem with WoW and this is going to sound crazy is with its quest system. There great dont get me wrong its great to have stuff to do other then just hunt but I think its geared to much to questing for my tastes.

I played in the alpha and some beta and never seem to beable to group at all, either eveyone had done the quest or they were in groups already so I ended up just soloing almost everthing and that was not fun at all.

Yeah, that's exactly what happened to me, in stress.

I think soloing might be a bit too easy in WOW.

Hopefully that will change at higher levels.

[Destructor]

I have a real pet peeve with limited character customization (especially in an MMOG with tons of other players!) and was just wondering if anybody could elaborate on how few EQ2 has?

EQ2 has a ton of facial edits and such. In short, each part of the face (eye tilt, cheek length, nose tilt, eye color, etc) has a slider to scale up and down on. While some designs look utterly freaky, most turn out to make a very realistic looking face in the end.

In addition, you have about 8-10 (depending on race) hairstyle/head accessories to choose from (including none at all).

Because of the sliders and the adjustments, odds are that you'll never encounter anybody who has the exact same face as you do.

I hear it's like SWG, but don't quote me on that as I never played that dredge of a game short of some Beta time (where me, and everybody else, said that it wasn't ready for launch).

[Raintitan]

"I have a real pet peeve with limited character customization (especially in an MMOG with tons of other players!)"

I completely agree.

I'm a grown man, and I can be honest. Much of the reason I played AC1 for so long was because I enjoyed all the different armor, clothing, colors, ect. I liked being able to walk into a town and recognize people by their outfits, ect.

[YellowKing]

EQ2's character customization is certainly leaps and bounds beyond WoW's. However, it still falls way short of what they promised in my opinion. I honestly think the SWG character creator was better, so I'm not sure where they get off calling it the best character creator to date. Sure there are sliders, but the options still feel very limited. Facial features are OK, but body types are extremely limited.

The upside to all this is that by keeping the character customization tight, they were able to create some truly fantastic armor and equipment. I think once you see a robe swirling realistically around a character or a shield hanging convincingly off the back of a chainmail breastplate, that limited customization at the beginning won't seem so bad.

[Eightball]

To me, both WoW and EQ2 lack real character customization.  I don't mean aesthetic changes like eye shape or mouth shape, I really could care less about that.  I mean differentiation between one character type to another; ie one thief to another thief.  I want to be able to choose where my stat points go, what to specialize in, etc.  Unfortunately, neither really allows this (yes, WoW has talents, but there certainly are better builds than others, some talents are not even close to the alternatives...).

I think soloing might be a bit too easy in WOW.

Hopefully that will change at higher levels.

It doesn't.  I levelled my toon 54-55 and 59-60 exclusively those two levels by grinding mobs solo.  I actually got better at soloing as I got higher level.

[The Grue]

I think soloing might be a bit too easy in WOW.

Hopefully that will change at higher levels.

It doesn't.  I levelled my toon 54-55 and 59-60 exclusively those two levels by grinding mobs solo.  I actually got better at soloing as I got higher level.

The question  have is do you have to solo in WoW?  From what I hav eread about WoW, you can solo all the way to max, but are there still enough groups out there so that you can find a group pretty easily if you want the social and team aspects of grouping?  Concepts like these will be what finally make me decide between WoW and EQ2.  Hopefully, I can get in the betas of both and see for myself.

[coopasonic]

I'm so split on EQ2 or WoW.  I'm seriously torn.  I have played WoW for almost a year (since undead push in alpha).  I've experienced a lot of the game, and it's really quite good.

This is why I am thinking about getting EQ2. I've played WoW for close to a year now... I've seen pretty much everything from 1-50 a few times, I need something different.

Poor Blizzard, they kindly let me in the Alpha and I'm getting bored with the game just before release.

I've heard things both good and bad about EQ2 on my guild boards, but none of the bad seems all that bad to me, or doesn't impact somethnig I am too interested in (crafting)... so I think I'll give it a shot.

[Raven]

Custom breast size - heh. I can imagine the hell that would raise.