EQ2 First Impressions, mixed feelings Options

[Rogue]

Miraculously, EQ2 does work on my computer, even though I have to have near-shit quality settings ._.

Anywho, first thing's first.

-Graphics

The game is sexy. Very sexy. (56k will die if you click this) But in order to play the game to its fullest potential, you need one hell of a computer

It's OK when you turn the effects down low, but if you turn everything to minimum it gets hard to see stuff :\

-Sound

Pretty good I think, but the voices sometimes get annoying. Especially the pirate at the beginning of the tutorial.

Music is good too, from what I've heard so far. I usually don't play games with sound on though

-Character Creation

Not as good as City of Heroes, but EQ2's character creation has its own unique options. First of all, you can change the shape of your character's face, which is something I don't see too much of. You can change the shape of your chin, eyebrows, the direction your eyes slant (lol) and the size of your nose and ears.

Most races gets their own special options too. Barbarians get tattoos and tribal body art (*points to sig*), Erudites get glowing glyphs on their faces, Iksars can change the way their scales and crest look, etc.

Customizable skin color was nice too. One thing I heard a lot of people complain about on other games was, everyone has to be white. You can also color your character's eyes to any color imaginable.

Hair color was fun too. You can pick a base color and a highlight color. My character's looks white to me though because I think having the settings low prevents you from seeing it properly ._.

-Gameplay

A lot of the early stuff is a newbie hazing tutorial of sorts. There are tons of quests you have to do to familiarize yourself with the game, and there are rewards (like some basic armor) for doing them. Also, you get free experience and levels for completing the newbie quests, which will take you to level 3 or so.

I think though, for the second time around, the newbie tutorial would be more of a pain in the ass than anything else. The good thing is, you can turn the tutorial levels OFF and jump right into the game instead.

There are two starting cities in this game, Qeynos and Freeport. Qeynos is the city of the good races, and Freeport is the city where evil races will start out. Neutral races have a choice to pick whichever city they want, and at level 15, you can do a "Betrayal" quest (only ONCE!) to change your home town no matter what race you started as.

Characters from one town are NOT welcome in the other, and if a guard sees you, they'll throw you out on your ass. The only way to get in is to sneak through the sewers or aqueducts and hope you don't run into a guard in town.

Once you finish the tutorial part, you're taken to an island to do more training. Here you pick the archetype your character will play as. There are four basic types of characters in this game: Fighter, Priest, Mage, and Scout. Each archetype splits off into three sub types, and each sub type splits off into a specific character class.

In most cases, any class can perform the function of the archetype they branch from, which in my opinion is a good thing. So any type of priest can function as a main healer in a party, whether they're a cleric, druid, or shaman; and each still has it's own seperate abilities.

The zones in the game are fairly big too, which can be nice or annoying, depending on if you're looking for a camping spot or traveling through

-Battle

Personally, I was a bit disappointed with solo fighting up until this point. It's basically auto-attacking, tossing out a spell here and there (or weapon skill if you're a melee, I don't have any as a priest... not yet anyways, if at all), and then resting when you get low on HP and mana.

However! Downtime is not as big a deal, because when you rest you regain health and mana pretty fast. I think in all the time I played last night, I only spent five minutes resting (collectively).

Inside group things are better, and there's a skillchain thingy of sorts, but it's confusing and I haven't figured it out yet. All I know is, each ability chains differently (much like FFXI) and in long chains all archetypes will have to participate. There's a little icon that pops up to show which ability to use next though, so it's a lot less chart-reading and guess work.

Powerleveling does not exist. Period. Once you attack a monster, the monster becomes "claimed" and you also become locked to outside interference. Nobody can run by and heal you while you're fighting, unless you call for help.

-Other stuff

One thing I always wanted to do on FFXI was let people come inside my Mog House. On EQ2, you can grant access to people on your friend list, and you can even let them play with the stuff you put in it, your plants, and your pets (I have no idea where you buy pets though). Also, there are different types of houses, ranging from a tiny room in the tavern to a mansion.

Death penalty is a little different than other MMORPGs. Instead of losing EXP, you will have an EXP "debt" that you will have to pay off before you start to level again. Also, your armor suffers some damage, and may become unusable (can be repaired). Unlike EQ1, you do NOT drop all your posessions when you die, which was a major inconvenience to everyone except necromancers.

If you are grouped, and you die, the EXP penalty is split amongst your entire group, which hopefully means bad priests and bad tanks won't be going too far. Being resurrected, or finding your spirit will take away most of the debt, though.

"Raiding" parties are different than the original. Instead of having 50+ people gang banging a boss, the max raid size is set to 24 people. So there are no more "zerg" uberguilds.

Next to each person's life bar there is a symbol to denote which archetype the character is, so you will know if your healer or mages are being beat down.

I can't really say for sure if it's a good game or not yet, seeing as how everyone is a newbie and hasn't gotten far, but I got a mixed first impression on it. On one hand, it seems very casually oriented, a plus for me. It's pretty, and it's fun (grouped anyways). On the other hand, soloing is a bit on the boring side, at least early on, and once you make a decision on your character's archetype/class/etc. you can't go back and change it.

I'm thinking, is it all just eye candy? Or a diamond in the rough?

Also it looks like there isn't an easy way to trade yet. No AH or bazaar from what I can tell so you have to use the zone-wide auction channel to offer trades.

Edit(s)- spelling>me

[DarkEpyon]

Sounds interesting. At least there were no high-level JP folks driving the economy like in FFXI when it started here.

[Oddies da Nerfed]

No, sony will do what it wants with the economy but introducing massive money syncs. And i wouldnt get to used to soloing in EQ2, considering sony would have liked to have removed it entirly from EQ1 but were unable to balance certain classes for shit. They will have delt with it in eq2. Proly be like ffxi where you can solo along for a while, but then it will become impossible. Was no secret of how bad they hated solo play and solo classes in EQ1. I see no reason for them to deciede to add it in number 2.

Personaly all i see EQ2 as, is SWG v 2.0. all eye candy, neat little trinkets to disgise the flaming piece of shit it is. Ill take a wild guess there is a bunch of "promised" content that isnt working or tested, and wont be till well after players get to it and complain.

As many of my old eq friends decided to beta test 2, and were in shock sony was going to release it so early. Only to get a head start on WoW mind you. The list of bugs and problems they had was quite impressive when i talked to em, and it has been less then a month. I know sony hasnt fixed shit in that time. One month is all they took to beta test GoD expansion for EQ1 and the fact it even installed right was a miracle. They are STILL fixing bugs in that single expansion a year later. Bugs that myself and hundereds other complaind about in the beta.

Maybe sony learned some lessons from EQ1, and the failures that are SWG and PlanetSide. They did actualy FINALY get around to listening to its player base in EQ after the 3.5 years that they had been driving the game into the ground with bug filled content and patches. But after 5 years of EQ, 3.5 of which sony had sole control of the game. I can safely say i will NEVER buy another SOE game as it is now.

[Guest_Shin_*]

those screen's look OK not that great i didnt like EQ1 so i doubt i would like EQ2 and it dosent look like it's worthy of leaving FFXI for thats for shure

FFXI>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>EQ2