Everquest 2, any enjoying it?

Huan

[H]ard|Gawd
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Being that I sorta lost roughly 3 years of my life on eq1 and moved to CoH sense then.. I'm curious to how folks are enjoying eq2. Some things i'm wanting to know about it from actual players and not from sony's pretend knowledgeful sites is.. How is the fun factor in the game? Is there major downtimes like eq1.. Do you find yourself camping for rare spawns? Are you playing it so much that your not even gonna take time to respond cause the equivelience of Acient Cyclops could spawn while your offline?

This whole camping issue really annoyed the hell outta me.. Killed the quest for me actually, I rather have to plan out a battle stradegy and actively make attempts at whooping big boss ass than having to clean out an entire dungeon and do it again for hours for Spiderline_Rare_01 to spawn..

Any wanna share their thoughts on the game please?


 
I'm enjoying it, granted I havnt played it the last few days cause of HL2. But i love it.
 
this is from playing beta. i know the downtimes seemed long between fights. dont know too much about the camping. but then again WOW was so much more fun i went there instead.


thank goodness it gets released tomorrow.
 
See thats the thing that turns me off of eq and on to CoH, the huge downtimes.... I love the whole elf,dwarf,halfling (( asslings )) gnome, troll, ogre, deal, love it.. But, its just been hampered sadistically imo with the downtimes... Guess my best way of telling em I don't support their methods is to simply not play it (( that was to you folks that were about to hit reply and tell me that if I didn't like it don't play it :D )).....

I'm gonna have to check into this WoW, if its fast paced and doesnt' rely on a broadband connection, I may have to check it out.


 
I've been playing EQ2 for a little while now and I enjoy it a lot. I've mainly been doing quests as it seems like a great way to get money, experience, and equipment. I've done somewhere around 50-60 quests and am a level 12 cleric at the moment. I've grouped with a couple people so far (mainly to kill boss type monsters for quests), but haven't done any grouping strictly for experience yet. I played WoW beta and it just wasn't for me. The character models (especially horde) really turned me off and the game on whole seemed too simple. The battle in EQ2 just seems more enjoyable.
 
My EQ2 experience has been good so far... (I'm a lvl 17 Shaman on Butcherblock)...

Soloing is possible but that is where you get hit with the most downtime... in a good group downtime is minimal. Last night we had a great XP group going non-stop! Most fun I have had in an MMORPG in recent memory. When everyone knows how to play their role and understands how Heroic Opportunities work, grouping action is a thing of beauty. I was the single healer in a full group (lvls 16-19) and we were basically going non-stop...

Questing in EQ2 is good too, you just have to look for the good quests on-line to get some hints where to start (Allakhazam does a good job with this...). The Quest log in EQ2 seems a little clunky at times tho...

Now, I like WoW too... I played the hell outta that game in testing and had loads of fun. Soloing works better in WoW (Did for me anyways...) and the way that the Quests are implemented works very well. The Quest interface in WoW is better than EQ2s IMO.

I had a bunch of friends tell me that EQ2 blows after level 8 because it takes too much time to level. I'm glad I didn't listen to them...

Bottom line is both games are fun in their own regard... oh and EQ2 is just PVE while WoW does offer PvP.

Just my $.02
 
I've been enjoying EQ2 immensely since it was released. The downtimes are fairly rare and pretty short when they do happen.

You need a pretty beefy comp to run this game though, make sure to upgrade to a gig of ram if you havent already.
 
Thats interesting to hear.... I have to be paranoid and expect sony to develope a reason to add in more downtime though sense that appears to be a trivial skill of theirs after they sink in enough people and get em addicted.. Like I said though, i'm probably just paranoid :)


 
I was very hesitant getting EQ2 since my experience with SWG was lackluster with SOE. I played a year of SWG, and for the most part 90% of that was just used as a chat program :D and guild stuff.
 
I was a former CoH as well, and as much as I loved the game for its personality and the customiizable characters as well just the plain jane rock em sockem and fight em, the game just got so plain. No variety in the missions hardly, and no PvP was just killing me. It was the same night, every night.

Been enjoying my EQ2 experience since day one. This game is so massive and goes in so many directions you can easily get fustrated or overwhelmed with over doing yourself. Quests are great if you want some solo time alone and get some money and items in the process. Im a mage, so I don't dare go hunting alone for obvious reasons. But also, for me, soloing just gets so old and so lonely fast. I mean, I spend $15 a month on a MMORPG that all im gonna do is sit in a corner all bymself and miss out on all the hunting parties, raids and large quests? I think not.

Honestly, this game is so expansive in every shape and form there is no reasons TO get bored:

1.You could go talk to some NPC's and do some errand runs and make easy xp and money
2. Go to the catacombs and travel the under cities,
3. Go visit the nether region caves and go cave spelunking
4. Go kill some mobs out in Antonicia,
5. Go explore the further regions of Black burrows,
6. Hop on a griffin *yes, you can ride griffins, sooooo cool!* and learn the land
7. Go make a group and do quests together or just go kill everything that moves
8. Form up raid parties with your guild and go on some majorly hard quests with major xp and item rewards!
9. Craft scrolls, weapons, food, *yep, you can be a chef* and armor and sell to people in the big cites. Get bored doing something or start hating it? Go do something else, theres tons of variety

There is nothing short bordem in this game. The graphics if your machine can handle it absoutely blow any MMORPG to date outa the water, the sound is all but perfect and you can customize pratically anything on your HUD for just that right look.

The downtime is very minimual in EQ2. With the right group, you will spend 90% + of your time killing, depending on your group layout. Soloing yes, your looking at much more downtime in comparison, but thats the price you pay for being a hero alone. Some classes like Savages, Clerics or Rouges solo better.

Between EQ2 and HL2, im gonna be VERY busy for the holidays.
 
IceWind said:
..........
1.You could go talk to some NPC's and do some errand runs and make easy xp and money
2. Go to the catacombs and travel the under cities,
3. Go visit the nether region caves and go cave spelunking
4. Go kill some mobs out in Antonicia,
5. Go explore the further regions of Black burrows,
6. Hop on a griffin *yes, you can ride griffins, sooooo cool!* and learn the land
7. Go make a group and do quests together or just go kill everything that moves
8. Form up raid parties with your guild and go on some majorly hard quests with major xp and item rewards!
9. Craft scrolls, weapons, food, *yep, you can be a chef* and armor and sell to people in the big cites. Get bored doing something or start hating it? Go do something else, theres tons of variety

..........

Wow, I didn't know you could do all that. It makes me want to play even more.

I'm an EQ noobie, never played EQ1, was holding out until EQ2 came out. Now I'm still on the island learning / figuring things out. So far it's interesting and fun.
 
I'm really starting to consider getting this game. I've played a few MMORPGS in my life... A Tale In the Desert, not my kind of game after all but I did purchase one month. SWG, I thought this game was awesome for 4 months but my char was pretty much a millionaire god, I saw no point in trying to finish my profession level because mixing and matching was more powerful and more satisfying than the end result of trying to be a bounty hunter with buggy hours wasting and money wasting missions.. I had my own guild hall and could afford to sell them and buy them like they were camp kits. It got old fast, the balance was way off. Then I tried FFXI and it wasn't my kind of game, too much soloing and players didn't come off like they were really into it like in SWG. It wasn't satisfying to level because I couldn't mesh well with other players and the communication was way off. I beta tested Horizons and saw no hope in that game.

So I guess I'm into balance, a strong community that is into the game and their characters, not too many bugs, and good solid back story to everything and satisfying quests. Which would be better for me? EQ2 or WoW? From the trailers and screenshots I've seen I'm more slated towards EQ2.
 
Well, well, well, where to begin...

My friends and I have been playing EQ2 since release ( yeah I know about 2 weeks) and it's hard to pull any of us off the game to do anything else. Two of us are 'quest whores', half of us (about 6) are trying out hand at crafting (it isn't as boring as it was in EQ), we also have explored most of the commons, we have done a couple dungeon crawls in different dungeons, set-up a guild, and lastly we had a small little instanced raid last night.

We are all between the levels of 16 and 20.

Named mobs are a more common occurance in the early levels, while some of the loot isnt stellar, its nice to just kill 'em. I personally haven't bought anything in game, everything I am wearing is from a quest or a drop, which is nice. Loot seems to be more thought out in this game, well so far anyway. There is so much to do in this game right off the bat it is kinda overwhelming.

We are really enjoying the game as a whole. Almost all of us were immediatley having fun since character creation and now ALL of us our having fun doing what we like now (quests, crafting, exploring, dugeon crawls, etc..) We also tried to play the stress test beta of WoW before we made the decision of what game to buy. We played that game for about 3 days before the majority of us were sick of it. Now I am not bashing WoW but it wasn't the game for us, too simplified for what we like too do. EQ2, however, was the game we decided on and none of us are dissappointed and most of our expectations were exceeded.
 
I'm currently a lv 14warrior.

I played EQ1 on/off for about 2 years, I grew to actually hate it, because it seemed that it was one hugeee grind with killing killing killing.

However EQ2 i'm rather enjoying.

There's alwaysss quests and more to do besides simply hunting. I currently have about 14quests in my book that I still have left to do.

The downtime isn't bad at all, food and water help replinish your stats pretty quickly.
 
Badger_sly said:
Wow, I didn't know you could do all that. It makes me want to play even more.

I'm an EQ noobie, never played EQ1, was holding out until EQ2 came out. Now I'm still on the island learning / figuring things out. So far it's interesting and fun.

And thats just one island. Qeynos. There are several islands beyond that as well
;)
 
IceWind said:
And thats just one island. Qeynos. There are several islands beyond that as well
;)

heck yea, i'm lv 14 and still haven't left the main qeynos island yet, spending msot of my time in antonica, I can't wait to see the snow lands and such.
 
Health and Power (HP and Mana) naturally recover about 3 or 4 times faster for EVERYONE in EQ2 than they did in EQ1.

I think you can imagine the impact that has on downtime.
 
What's good about EQ2 is that they implented a great downtime system that keeps the downtime at a minimum, while not making fights trivial. Basically as long as you are engaged in a fight your health and power regen will slow to a crawl. When you are unengaged however, the rate at which you regen goes up significantly. A fully drained power bar while unengaged and having some decent food/water will regen back to full within a minute.

BTW there is no sitting/medding in the game. You regen just as fast running around as you do sitting on your butt. So by the time you get to the next mob or area you should have fully regened.

Don't let the devout SOE haters that will instantly say that WoW is better bother you. As much bad as they have done in the past and the disaster that was SWG, EQ2 looks to be a winner, and brings a lot of the newbie excitment that came with playing the original EQ, and brings it in a totally new yet familiar package.
 
Firebot said:
What's good about EQ2 is that they implented a great downtime system
BTW there is no sitting/medding in the game. You regen just as fast running around as you do sitting on your butt. So by the time you get to the next mob or area you should have fully regened.
.

By far, that is one of the BEST things Sony did in this game. I was so sick in DAOC of having to sit my ass down to regen heath or power, add that to a full group of peeps and it meant ALOT of down time.
 
Filter said:
too bad they stole the whole gryphon rides from wow.
And WoW stole the idea from Lineage 2 dragons. And L2 stole the idea from FFXI airships. And I'm sure the list could go on. Games "steal" ideas from everywhere. You think Einstein did all the work that led up to relativity by himself?
 
Badger_sly said:
Wow, I didn't know you could do all that. It makes me want to play even more.

I'm an EQ noobie, never played EQ1, was holding out until EQ2 came out. Now I'm still on the island learning / figuring things out. So far it's interesting and fun.

Word of advice - get your mining/gathering/fishing/trapping skills & your tradeskills up while your on the newbie island - it's easier to level them up there. You'll need tradeskills at later levels to advance your combat skills.

...and it's nice being able to make all the 6-slot backpacks you can carry on your own.
 
ameoba said:
Word of advice - get your mining/gathering/fishing/trapping skills & your tradeskills up while your on the newbie island - it's easier to level them up there. You'll need tradeskills at later levels to advance your combat skills.

...and it's nice being able to make all the 6-slot backpacks you can carry on your own.

No thanks, I refuse to spend my gaming time making shit. If I want something, i'll go buy it from some other schmuck.
 
IceWind said:
No thanks, I refuse to spend my gaming time making shit. If I want something, i'll go buy it from some other schmuck.
See, me, on the other hand, am SPECIFICALLY interested in 'making shit'. I'm a tinkerer by nature, and that's what is maybe bringing MMORPGs to my attention.

Sadly, I can find very little details on the craftin system in either game.

Can someone who has played both (WoW and EQ2) compare them? If you are a 'casual' player - say, 4 hours a week tops - can you make a go of it just being a craftsman and still have fun?
 
I'm a lv 8 (almost 9) crafter in EQ2.

Basically , it's a lot of "flair" , like almost any other crafting part in an mmorpg.

You join a society in your starting town and all the equipment for crafting things is in the society house.

workbenches, forges, stoves, tables, etc.

There is quite a bit of different choices to do, and you can easily move between things, So you don't have to specifically "pick" a certain one and only work on it.

I make spells/runes, however some sub-compotents needed you can't just buy on the wholesale vendor in the house (where you buy compotents, etc) You can either make them yourself/buy them, for some things you have to gather from the wild, plants, wood, mining, etc.

For the most part (so far) all the spell compotents can be made yourself, just have to use different work styles.

Like for some things, I have to make via the wood bench, or from the chemistry table, and then take those and finally work on my spells at the tables for them.

It's a very "open" feeling crafting wise, where you think you "can" make what you want.

That's what I find "enjoyable" about it.

Now for the bad things, the actual crafting.

When you get everything you need and sit down to craft, it can be boring, very very boring. Every so often a icon will flash which you need to click, or you or your item will take damage (yes you can take dmg from things messing up). You can also use skills to buff the item and other things.

However the "re-action" clicking is , imo, put there to give it a feeling or "break" , something for you to do while your guy is making the item. it's repetitive when you need to literally craft 20 items,

"repat, begin, click various icons" repat, over and over for 20 times.


It's not a bad crafting system, but i just can't help think it could be better.
 
IceWind said:
No thanks, I refuse to spend my gaming time making shit. If I want something, i'll go buy it from some other schmuck.
Sigh...more false crap. You don't have to make anything if you don't want to. The skills you should raise are the GATHERING skills. You find resourcing out in the wild while leveing. You double click them and you can get stuff from them, and you can raise your skill. However, in order to gather from some of the high level areas you need a certain minimum gathering level. I don't see this as a problem since you don't have to gather anything if you don't want to, but hey, it is free money.
 
Stiler said:
However the "re-action" clicking is , imo, put there to give it a feeling or "break" , something for you to do while your guy is making the item. it's repetitive when you need to literally craft 20 items,

"repat, begin, click various icons" repat, over and over for 20 times.

It's not a bad crafting system, but i just can't help think it could be better.
Actually, that's not so bad and does sound very cool.

AFAIK, the 'reaction click' is to prevent the grinders from making godly items. I read previous games in the series had a problem were people would kick off work on ENORMOUSLY powerful items, leave their PC on and go do to work, and come back and it'd be done. Do the same thing going to bed - kick off work on it, and since it required no interaction, just go to sleep leaving their PC on and connected, and when they woke up the next morning it'd be done. I guess SOE wanted to kill that so that people who actually *roleplay* when crafting aren't getting shafted compared to the AFK'ers.

ANYWAY...that sounds cool.

Could we get more detail on these 'society house' things? What all goes on there - people coming and going, doing crafting? Are there a lot of them? Do they get crowded, or are they instanced? Can you sell goods from them (as a shop, say)? Or, can you set up your home as a market? Or, can you buy a property in the city somewhere and set IT up as market?

Basically, how do you go about selling and marketting your goods?
 
The houses afaik aren't instanced, there's a lot of other people that come/go aswell.

there's always someone else in there crafting away.

A neat thing I didn't mentioned, is that when you work at a crafting table, it isn't just a blank "crafting" looking thing, the table will do things (IE wood cutting table will act like it's cutting wood, while your character acts like he's sawing wood, the chem table has a boiling pot on it that starts, while your guy is mixing something in a cup).

Basically the society you join depends on your race/starting town.
When you hit lv 10 crafting, you can join a special society that's specified to one field, like an outfitter, which makes weapons/armor.

I haven't got there yet though.
 
Stiler said:
Basically the society you join depends on your race/starting town.
When you hit lv 10 crafting, you can join a special society that's specified to one field, like an outfitter, which makes weapons/armor.

How is it limited to race/town? Can you move to another town after you start and change crafts?

Having played a few offline RPGs, I'm aware that levelling plays a huge role in the game - how far can you level up JUST going crafting (IE., no combat)?
 
dderidex said:
How is it limited to race/town? Can you move to another town after you start and change crafts?

Having played a few offline RPGs, I'm aware that levelling plays a huge role in the game - how far can you level up JUST going crafting (IE., no combat)?

Evil and good races are spilt for the time being on two different islands. Each race has its own special hometown on the island but you can easily setup base in any town that you want but some towns have much more traffice and people around then others.

If you really wanted to, you could sit on your ass as a level 1 Mage and be the ultimate crafter ,or so i've been told and seen with my 2 weeks playing EQ2.
 
Yes, Combat and Crafting are two different tiers.

You don't have to do any combat , just craft if you wish and your crafting lv will go up, they are seperate things.

As far as town, well you start in a seperate town depending on your side (good - Qeynos, Bad - Freeport). However you can change alligenment via a "betrayl" quest and then have access to the other town as your home town, i've already saw a few trolls in qeynos.

As far as races for the society, to my knowledge at least it seems that the society you can join is dependent on your race, as a barbarian I could only join the stalwart township society , all the others wouldn't let me join. So I assumed it was either because of my race.
 
Hmm.. Maybe once I get the cattle thing going here i'll buy a copy and try eq2 for a month if everything stays at the fun level with it.... I like hearing differen't folks opinions of the game from their view, so far it sounds very interesting, but still will lose alotta time on it lol... Do I dare venture into a realm run by sony once again? Hmmmmm


 
I already got 81 quests complete :)

Also, the EQ2players.com website is GREAT. You can see your character, looks through EVERY item in the game that has been found, see the top ranks of people for various things, and for $3/month more there are premium features where you can chat with your guild offline to them ingame among other things. It had some problems updating at first but now it seems to be working pretty well.
 
As far as races for the society, to my knowledge at least it seems that the society you can join is dependent on your race, as a barbarian I could only join the stalwart township society , all the others wouldn't let me join. So I assumed it was either because of my race.

It is not based on race, however many crafting societies will only allow you in if you have specialized in a specific field (level 10+). Basically there are two main types of crafting societies: wholesalers and workshops. The wholesalers are the societies that anyone can join at level 1, and there is one in each of the 'starting' cities like Castleview or Starcrest. You can only join one of these at a time, but you can join any one of them. Wholesalers have all the basic ingredients needed to make level 1-10 crafting, including the recipes. Wholesalers also offers 'gathering' quests where you need to fetch harvested items like pelts or rough malachite and bring them in the shop for some quick cash and society status points.

Workshops tend to be much smaller in size, but what they lack in size they make up in specialization. Workshops will have a much smaller list of items for purchase then the wholesaler and for the most part only hold the fuel components needed to start up the crafting machine. However they also hold all the advanced level books past level 10 for your specialization up to level 50. This is where you get the recipes for your later levels, and this is also where you will probably end up finishing your crafting career as you build your society's level. Workshops offer crafting quests compared to the gathering quests of the wholesalers. Usually these crafting quests will ask you to fill an order of 10 items which you much craft on your own and give to the society . This is great since not only do you level up your artisan skill by doing this, you also end up making some nice cash in the process which will more then make up the cost of making the items.
 
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