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It's not for everyone

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 251 / 345
Date: October 30, 2004
Author: Amazon User

A local area friend of mine started out as a beta tester for EQ2 and became frustrated and bored with it and allowed me to continue in his place and while the game has many "beautiful" graphical elements far surpassing anything else, it's the skeleton of the game I must now tell you about.

If you are a die-hard group oriented type player you will most likely enjoy EQ2.

If you are die-hard solo oriented type player you will not enjoy EQ2.

The content is so group oriented that on some of your core quests (to continue to level) "requires" a group. This is the bad part about the game as a whole.

If you are a duo (husband and wife team like), you are going to run into the same problems, you won't even be able to kill the quest mob as a duo, you need that 3rd person. This is a very sad part of the game and for many working class adults.

The mobs are setup mostly for 3+ players, 6 being the optimum choice with one archetype of each catagory, healer, scout, mage, warror, the other two can be anything really, scout this time around being most important because they are the ones that create the bonus specials to combat.

Mostly through my beta play I researched and tested the solo content (that I could find) and while early on there seemed to be viable content in open areas and dungeons alike, the recent last patch has now taken away ALL dungeon content for soloists. Thus the soloist is reduced to yard trash mobs, with little or no loot and never any decent loot at all and the slowest experience grind around.

It appears as if SOE has misled us, while not misleading us, they love to use play on words like "You can solo to 50", yep, you can solo to 50, but, you will pay "hell" doing so. You will find yourself frustrated and unrewarded for your play other than experience which is about 1/3rd (if that much) that of what groups get per kill. You will be reduced to buying all of your gear from crafters or other players, and never feel any satisfaction of a reward for all your work. This is not good for those who enjoy soloing.

There is no twinking, other than you can hand down level restricted equipment to your alts or someone lower, but, you will never see the likes of a level one in level 50 gear anymore or even level 10 gear, there is basically no powerLEVELING since all encounters are locked and outside buffings or heals or special spells by other players have no affect. Once you are in a locked encounter, you are own your own, whether grouped or solo, that's all the power you're going to ever get. So those expecting their buddies to powerlevel them up in EQ2, you had better start looking for another game. It's gone.

The grouping levels are about the same as EQlive, starting out you can group with people about 4 levels higher than you and it scales up as you gain levels at about a 75% range. You can be 75% of another persons level and still group with them.

I pity some of you on launch day, be prepared to be bombarded by "group" requests relentlessly. Even in beta, there are just too many "children" playing it. Be prepared for the vulgar mouthed, smack talking, rude, crude, and socially unacceptable causing ruin to your gaming pleasure and groups. Because now when ONE person dies, the WHOLE GROUP pays for it, 1/6th of your experience is zappoed, everytime some idiot or fool does something stupid. And you know kids, they love to do stupid things and cause frustration.

The game is being launched about 60% complete if that, it's not exactly ready, but, it's ready sort of thing. It's ready enough that it will probably have the same kind of launch day and days and weeks ahead as any other. Expect long downtimes for emergency patches and possibly to not even be able to login at all that first day. Expect quests to be broken. Expect crashes to desktop. Actually just expect the norm, cause that's just how they do these games nowadays, there's not a one that doesn't have bugs/flaws gaming issues and incomplete programming when released. You can buy it or not, that's your choice, just expect to have some rough and rocky rides along the way.

If I were group oriented I would probably enjoy the ride of EQ2, but, I am predominantly a soloist and when I beta test that is what I look for in them, how much do they offer a casual player with little time to play 1 to 3 hours a day if that. Not all casual players are soloist, but, many are forced to solo in these games due to time factors. And when it takes hours to find a group or someone that will have you, you just don't get your moneys worth out of the game.

Duo's might do a little better if you are willing to pick up a 3rd, one extra is not as bad as 4 extra, because the more you have in your group, the more chance you have of gaining that idiot or fool I spoke of before.

My review here is focused on how I play and what I look for, of course I cannot descibe every little detail about EQ2, I have descibed and reviewed what I felt important to deliver to the rest of the uninformed out there that might be thinking about buying this game for the same reason I 'thought' about buying it, but, will no longer be doing so. I hope it was helpful.

Not Interested in Verant

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 48 / 186
Date: January 19, 2004
Author: Amazon User

My daughter and I played EQ loyally for a year and a half. It was awesome, an escape into a fantasy world of dungeons and dragons and marvellous elves. The expansion packs were nice until EQ went to the moon. I never bought an expansion after that.

In the old days, all the classes had purpose. My wizard was a remarkable traveller and I used to make a few plat porting people people around. My guild had fun banding together for raids and hunts too. But then it became so easy to port anywhere. Why bother playing a basically weak druid or wizard?! Then cat people started running around, and lizards on their heals. Sigh, how I missed the Tolkienish feel of the old EQ.

I finally quit EQ when DAC came out. I left EQ on one of our computers for a few months more for my daughter. But one day when she entered the wrong password while logging in, they locked her out of her account. I called them and they were very arrogant and refused to fix it. Nevermind they had just cut off a 9 yr old child from her favorite winter passtime. They were very arrogant and clearly implied that they owned the MMOLRPG market, so we could play be their rules or rot. Instead, I introduced my daughter then and there to DAC. There are a dozen good MMOLRPGs out there now that have beaten EQ hands down. As long as Verant runs it, I'll never go back.

EQ has always had lousy customer service. The game was a good RPG but turned into a videogame. I doubt EQ2 will be an improvement.

Still not ready for prime time

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 11
Date: December 09, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Before you give this game as a Christmas gift, be aware that the game is still in a pay-to-Beta state. I get tossed from the servers ~every~ day for up to an hour for maintenance. Be sure the recipient of your gift has a Beta tester mentality or they may get frustrated.

Take everything bad about EQI and multiply it

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 10
Date: December 25, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I really enjoyed EQI once upon a time as the first of its kind, and thought that EQII would be the 'next generation' of MMORPGs. Alas, it's like they took everything that was really annoying in EQI and then removed everything fun for EQII. Grinding, camping, lag, poor graphics, horrible loading times, forced grouping ... three times as bad as it ever was in EQI. Then add in the fact you only get three character slots for more money per month and I really have to wonder what they were thinking.

Hardcore EQI fans and powergamers who enjoy camping and grinding will enjoy this game, as it's really just the same as the first but made 'harder' for those that spend every minute of their freetime online.

Great Art and Coding but Bad ideas and Horrible Company.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 21 / 26
Date: November 23, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Lets not beat around the proverbial bush. The art and the coding of EverQuest 2 is top notch. The graphics are stunning and the effects are great. The implementation of these aspects is right on line in that the developers implemented what was designed. The servers are stable so long as not overloaded. Furthermore, the game tutorials are very helpful and it is easy to get into the game in a short period of time. It all seems wonderful until you dig deeper.

The problem with the game is the design and the company that designed the game. Clearly the game is designed to do one thing, suck you in as a newbie and not reveal the deficiencies until you have invested time in playing the game to the point that you are reluctant to give it up. To try to give you an idea of what I am talking about, lets hit the major points one by one.

The Crafting System:

This system is so completely flawed. In addition to missing recipes preventing the crafting of many items, there are numerous bugs in the system. However, we can perhaps give SOE the benefit of the doubt that they will add the needed recipes and fix the bugs. The problem is that the system is poorly designed in the first place. Making a single sandwich for use on your adventures will take you 4 to 8 combines at a minute each. The crafter sits in front of the stove and watches the progress meters while responding to events. If the crafter misses responding to an event, they can actually be killed while crafting. The word "tedious" hardly covers it.

To use an example, think back on the old days of EQ when you had to craft a single arrow at a time with three clicks. Move items into the crafting kit and hit combine. Do that 400 times and you have 400 arrows. Annoying? OK, now with EQ your arrow crafting kit is not mobile so you cant do it while waiting in combat downtime. On top of that, EACH combine will take up to a minute in which time you have to respond to any number of events. If you thought they couldn't make crafting any worse from EQ1, you were mistaken.

Even if you make items, don't bother being anything other than a scribe. The other professions are not in demand much at all. Provisioners (chefs) for example, can make food but the benefits of this food are so miniscule as to be certainly not worth the two and a half hours you need to make baked sunfish from scratch.

Part of the problem with the system is that in an inexplicable move, SOE actually decided to replace the entire crafting system (essentially) only a short time before the end of beta.

Selling and Buying:

The only thing that rivals the crafting system in poor design is the selling and buying system of the game. In order to buy an item from a player, you need to first visit a broker. This broker will allow you to find items up for sale, at which point you have to then go visit the seller. Good so far? Well, top this off with the fact that the seller MUST be in their apartment at the time that they are selling the item. Therefore, depending on where the seller is, you have up to a 20 minute run; in the meantime you might get there to find that the item has already been purchased by another player. This gives a new definition to the word time sink. Imagine trying to buy a sword sold by 5 different vendors in 5 different parts of the city and each of them only has one. This could be an exercise in frustration to say the least.

To make matters worse, players can not sell items while offline. Therefore, they have to keep their computer connected and running. This means that people instead of logging out leave their computers running and go AFK. It is a rather inexplicable thing considering that these players selling will be chewing bandwidth at the time.

The standard, "don't worry about it they will fix it" does not apply in this case. In fact, the system is working as intended according to SOE. Their logic is that they want to limit item availability. The reality is that they are trying to drive customers to buying a second account and playing one and selling on a mule on the other account; since this is the only reasonable plan to selling your wares in the game. A pure, unadulterated attempt at a money grab.

SOE's Moorgard said that the crafting system was as a result of the thought that the old pre-bazaar, system of EQ was the best. Personally I cant imagine how they would come to such a conclusion since those markets were a prime source of complaint from their EQ player base. The major complaints of the bazaar were the lag and frame rate and having to stay logged in but AFK. (god help you if you pay other than flat rate for your ISP). SOE solved the frame rate but set the economy back 5 years.

Classes and Races:

One good thing about EQ2 is that any race can be any class. This introduces many opportunities for role-playing advances such as the Dwarven bard or the Halfling monk. However, the class system itself is restrictive to say the least.

Each player makes three critical choices. What archetype, class and specialization they pick. After that there are basically no other choices to be made. Classes are a linear path in that what you pick means you get x spells and y abilities. There is no give and take, no tradeoffs to decide from. Its essentially idiot proof. Fortunately for SOE, you wont really get this until you get to at least level 20 to 25 and have your free month expired and your subscription running. This player doesn't find that to be a coincidence.

In addition, you must do several time consuming quests to select your classes and at other points that SOE calls "Hallmarks". Although I personally don't find this to be a problem, some other players would find the system to be annoying if they didn't enjoy questing.

What I do find annoying is that many of the classes are essentially the same. In fact other than the names of spells, there is little difference between the various classes. Bards are merely scouts with a couple of spells (yes, spells and not really songs).

Combat:

Combat in the game is fun. Its much less linear than EQ. Each character gets some special abilities and combinations of those abilities can cause other spells to "fire". For example, a cleric can invoke this combination (called a Heroic Opportunity) and then cast smite twice and have a stronger smite hit the bad guy. In groups, players can synchronize the heroic ops to make even stronger spells go off. The actual combat flow makes you feel much more like you are in the game and less that you can go AFK while auto swinging.

The problem, however, is that many of the heroic ops are broken and difficult or impossible to pull off. For example, you have to pull off a heroic op in 30 seconds but yet sometimes a spell required 2 times for it will have longer than 30 sec recharge time; so you can fire off the first spell but cant possibly get the spell off again before the timer expires. We can assume that SOE will fix this little point.

Questing:

At first EQ2 questing seems little more than running a number of errands, each with their appropriate pointer to the right location and a glowing trail to lead you there. However, once you get past these initial quests, the system opens up with options and things to figure out. This means that the questing system is actually fairly well done. There are lots and lots of quests to be done and the quester will be kept busy for ages. The only complaint I have about the questing system is that the developers didn't harness other ideas of their community for making the system even better such as the introduction of a great library.

{EDIT}

I'm Disappointed

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 20 / 42
Date: October 31, 2004
Author: Amazon User

My growning concern was pvp and solo play of EQ2, I thought there would be more, but, after reading the official site I see there will be NO PVP whatsoever and no promises of any to come in the future, this is a terrible day for PVPers everywhere who enjoy mmorpgs. It's also a terrible day for SOE since they will lose money by not having any sort of PVP system.

Then to top it all off, there are very many threads now concerned about the solo content and "lack thereof". It appears in the last few days they are taking away instead of adding to the solo content as soloing in dungeons is no longer available.

I see a bunch of fanboi banter here though both from the EQ2ers and the WOWers. You both really should state the facts and quit trying to make your game out better than the other. They both have potential, but, for me that potential is lost on EQ2 as I read more and more about less and less for "my" style of play.

It's really kinda like one of the other reviewers said. It's not for everyone and I can see that clearly now.

Dang and I really wanted to play EQ2, but, I can't see wasting $... and then $ ... a month for less than 20% of the content if that much and never being able to solo in dungeons.

But, I doubt I will buy {EDITED} either, so I'm no fanboi of any at the moment.

They expect us all to just start over?

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 17 / 43
Date: October 22, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Ummm... no thanks. I don't care HOW pretty it is, I, as well as just about every EQ player I know (and I know many of them) all agree: The timesinks stop at EQ1. There will be no starting over for any reason. We've all invested too much time on EQ1 to just drop it and move forward, especially with Sony's infamously horrific customer service.

I am a paying beta tester for Everquest (in my opinion that game still hasn't left beta, and since I pay to play it, well, that makes me a paid beta tester doesn't it hehe). I will not pay Sony for the privaledge of testing their new game.

IF Sony was smart, they would make Everquest II a complete rewrite of EQ1 with this fabled new engine of theirs and allow people to import the characters into it that they have worked so incredibly hard on.

EQ2 is going to be a total loser, mark my words--regardless of it's prettiness or features. It will be another Anarchy Online, UO2 (ummm WHAT UO2? heh), Dark Ages of Camelot, etc. It simply will never reach critical mass because EQ1 players will NOT switch in droves like they are hoping.

Sony is crazy to make EQ2 incompatible with EQ1. Not smart at all.

It truly seems that the "soul" of Verant has left the building, in a big way, since their acquisition.

Not much Fun - Try {EDIT}

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 17 / 26
Date: December 10, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I have been Playing EQ2 for about two or three weeks now. I am up to level 15. I am still fighting mostly badgers,bears,and deer. I am still using the same lame armor and weopons I got around level 8. Each new spell I get is lamer than the last. The zones are pretty boring, with all of the decent monsters mostly in groups of five or six, so they are impossible to solo. Loading between zones can be up to 5 min. long. I have a good running system, and when I run through a populated city the lag is unbearable. The quests are pretty boring too. Run to this zone and deliver this. Run back to the other zone and talk to so and so. Most of the quests are spent running through different zones, so between the running and the loading time lag for each zone a 30 min quest turns into a hour and a half long. I enjoyed EQ1 enough to get up to level 40 before I quit. I doubt I will make level 20 on EQ2. Just not worth the time and energy to play. {EDIT}

Only for people with a lot of time!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 27
Date: February 04, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I played EQ for over three years...awesome in the beginning, lots of people in all the zones , you could log on and find a group right in your own home town. That was then, now you can go to zones and be the only one there. Almost all the major cities are completely empty, almost entire continent is barren except for the new zones. You have to invest a lot of time in order to make enough "friends" to find and group with when you start. Solo play is very difficult at higher levels. Everyone gets a solo strategy, and can do well at it but the game gets repetitive that way. If you only have an hour or so to kill a night then EQ is not your game. I wish they would make it so people can log on and play around for an hour and advance your character solo, and if they want offer some more enticements to make the game more "groupable" but they do not. I found myself getting a character that I could solo with, but did not have much to offer a group and therefore was stuck in that mode. Good to luck to all you people with more time on your hands, I wish I had more time to play and group the game would be more fun, but to those who do not have much time (which is a good thing actually) find something off the shelf like Neverwinter Nights that you can turn/off like a switch and not spend the entire night looking for group (LFG) lol.

You will need to play 1/2 the game afk

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 16 / 25
Date: December 06, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Turn on your computer, load the game and walk away for the night. Is that how you like to play your games? Are you ok with leaving your computer on all day, running the game when you are at work? If are not you have extreme difficultly advancing in the game.

The auction system is an interregnal part of the game. In order to sell stuff on the auction your character must stand in one spot with nothing to do. If you log off our leave this spot your items are no longer for sell. You can ether sit and stair at the same screen for hours on end or walk away with EQ2 running.

If you choose not to use the auction system you will have substandard abilities gear and spell.

Don't even thing about running this game at the minimum of 512 meg RAM, a 1gig CPU and 128 video card with. I ran the game at first with 512 meg RAM, a 1.7 gig CPU and 256 video card with. When I was in town I lagged so badly I could barley move. Zoning took forever. I upgraded to 1gig of RAM. I still lag in town and busy zones but I can know get around. Most of the people I speak to that don't have serious lag issues are running 2 gigs of RAM. I have a DSL connection.

I have to say pass on this game. For two reasons 1 The game dose not play smoothly a lot of lag and a lot of time waiting for screens to load and unload as you change zones. 2 Then amount of time you need to leave the game and run while you are not playing. It's a shame. I wanted so badly to like this game. I liked the other version of Ever Quest.

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