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