EverQuest 2 Announced

[[AK]Palooka]

Check out the blurb on Caster's Realm here, and don't forget to look at the screen shots, which look GOOD. So, if Star Wars doesn't wet your whistle, you can venture back into Norrath in a year and a half.

[Slaughter]

Woohooo!!!!!

[Widowmaker]

Read all about it a couple days ago and to tell the truth I am far less than impressed. Looks like some eye candy and do NOT pay attention to the recomended specs, you will have to run in 640x480 with all effects and extras off running less than a 1 gig Geforce 3 card. The minimum is a 733MHz, Geforce 3 (I only have a 2 and do not have any money at all to upgrade for some time), and 512M of ram. Those specs, except for the video card, do not on the surface look too bad. But remember.... those are the MINIMUM specs, not the RECOMENDED specs. When was the last time you were realy impressed with a how a game looked and performed when you were at or near the minimum specs? I'm sure you can think of some but how many games can you think of that performed like complete crap when near the minimum specs? A lot.

Item decay? This was the worst thing in my opinion about DAOC, that and the levels of items so that every couple of levels of advancement you made you HAD to upgrade your equipment and after a certain time you HAD to replace your equipment because it has a limited timer in the world. They are adding both of these into EQ2... ick. In DAOC you were required to build up multiple trade skills to remain competative in the population and I DO NOT spend my money in a game to sit around and combine components for hours on end. Some people like this setup, claim it is more "realistic" but realism realy should be totaly thrown out the door when talking about a game where you can cast magic spells. I do not find it fun to replace equipment that wears out, I find it anoying as hell if I spend a month to aquire an item and it has to be replaced in 3 weeks or less because it wears out! Not only anoying but that is a quick way to get me to hit the cancel account button.

Banks are not global? Are they insane? I put my stuff in Freeport (for example) then run over to Qeynos but I would have to go BACK to Freeport to get something out of the bank... like some spending cash? That is more than insane, that is stupid as all hell. You can buy some sort of transport for your banked goods but I am not sure if it is a transport that you have to "tow" (like a pet) to your new location or if it is something that simply sends it to another bank. Either way it is not a good thing since how many times have we started a night at point A then ended up at point G due to a variety of reasons... then we want to bank... I see a problem without the global banks. Again not very realistic but I absolutely do not play a fantasy game for it's realism.

Not too wild about the new character creation thing either, again it is a rip off of DAOC and I did not realy care for that kind of progression there. Nothing specific but if you are going to use a class based structure just plain make it a class based structure. I just prefer the tried and true familliar character design of D&D, er, EverQuest.

Player built housing. This is something I see A LOT OF PEOPLE WANTING. But not me, and not at all. I played Ultima Online back in the day and they had houses, mansions, halls and even castles that players could buy. People thought this was a great idea... and guess what. EVERYBODY had a house if not multiple houses. Very soon, since no matter how pricey you make them the nature of MMORPG's is that you can have ANYTHING as long as you spend the time to get it be it levels, power or wealth. So in UO what we had is on big huge continuous city from shore to shore, and every shore inhabited by fleets of boats that players could buy too. There was not an empty inch in the world. There was no such thing as "exploring" since no matter where you went to explore at some idiots house was in your way. It was, again, more than anoying it was just plain stupid. Of course add to that the completely unregulated PvP so if you took a step out of town in anything resembling actualy gear you lasted an average of maybe 10min before you blasted out by a trash talking idiot who played the game "since beta".

That's all the ranting I can think of about EQ2. I hardly play EQ anymore but I still do from time to time, I still enjoy it but still do not have a character up the "Uber" levels because that part of the game does not look "fun" to me, looks like work and I have a job. I would be extreemely suprised if I signed up for EQ2, in fact I can be pretty sure I will avoid it completely.

Star Wars Galaxies looks fun, but if they do the above things in that game I will avoid it as well.

EQ2 looks like it will incorporate a bunch of things from a bunch of MMORPG's. Unfortunately for me they are the things I like least about the other games. But that is just my opinion.

On a plus note the multiplayer Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast is FANFREEKINGTASTIC! Not sure how long it will hold interest but it is a blast to whip out a lightsaber. Dueling, saber only-no force is what I have been doing the past couple days (just got it sunday) and I am getting to where I can hold my own with the average duellist. It's all in fun.

[[AK]Squidly]

I loved the houses/keeps in UO. One of the coolest things about it.

Different strokes for different folks I guess.

[Widowmaker]

Exactly, Squid. Many people are looking forward to that feature for sure. I just personaly did not like the reams of houses. They did some changes to alleviate the congestion like require upkeep, you have to log on every few days or the house falls into disrepair and poofs but it still did not clear up my feeling of over development.

A lot of people love the idea and it did not bother them that there were houses everywhere. I just personaly hated it.

The computer spec thing probably won't be an issue either by the time it is released but whenever I see lots of eye candy I cringe. I just know that the prettier the pictures the harder it is on hardware so I suspect you will need a pretty beefy machine to run EQ2 with any kind of satisfaction. Not a huge deal but right now I am so broke that if my car runs out of gas before payday I won't be able to drive it till then

[[AK]Bribo]

You would think that MMORPG game developers would take more of a modular world design when writing these programs. In other words, worlds that can grow. I have always felt that games like Ultima Online and DAOC were somewhat confining after you had been in them for a while.

A modular design would allow players to download new maps which connected to the base world in a Lego-like manner. This would keep sprawl and clautrophobia down while keeping the game fresh.

I'll design this in my next game....

[[AK]Squidly]

I guess the challenge is setting up a hardware system that can handle an infinitely growing world.

I suppose the real way to do it would be to have clusters of servers for each world. Add a certain amount of new territory? Add another box to the cluster.

This sort of thing would require thinking of the hardware design from the very beginning of the software design. I imagine that as MMORPGs evolve, this will happen more and more.

[Slaughter]

I like the new screens of EQ.. say goodbye to this computer.. but by then I'll have a computer capable of running it.. I mean a year and a half.. people nomrally upgrade every 3 years, I do every 2.. and I'm due for a new one this summer (winter actually but I need one before college). Anywho.. so I will get this game.. but I'm gonna make sure I chime in against the DAoC class system heavily before I do.