)Second, um. Is it fun?
Begin.
And it rocks.
quote:
Pesco obviously shouldn't have said:
Yes.. but it wont look all that pretty.And it rocks.
Well, how not pretty are we talking here though? I mean, I'm not expecting beauty or anything, but a decent resolution and framerate are what I'm really looking for.
What about it rocks? Suddar fucked around with this message on 11-13-2004 at 12:52 AM.
I don't think I'll be botherin to buy it otherwise. Too damned pricey for something I won't be able to use for quite some time.It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of Java the thoughts aquire speed, the teeth acquire stains, the stains become a warning. It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.
quote:
Suddar was naked while typing this:
Well, how not pretty are we talking here though? I mean, I'm not expecting beauty or anything, but a decent resolution and framerate are what I'm really looking for.What about it rocks?
My other machine runs 1024x760 on "High Performance" so I'd expect the same resolution with running at "Very High Performance".
You lose texture detail, but you still have the sparkles.
And it's fun. It has good quests, the voice acting is interesting, and there are some good changes from normal EQ that I really like.
quote:
Azizza attempted to be funny by writing:
Anything under a Gig or RAM is going to kill you in the city zones but everywhere else is fine.
The game is quite frankly stunning. It seems to be much more quest driven than EQ 1 and the overall game mechanics are very polished. However they are also similar enough to EQ that someone who played it can master them in a very short period of tim.
I have under a gig of RAM and I do just fine
quote:
Jania Arindelil had this to say about Cuba:
I have under a gig of RAM and I do just fine
Planetside plays terribly with a great system but low RAM.
But 1gb of RAM and a terrible system and you can play fine.
quote:
Delidgamond spewed forth this undeniable truth:
You know you want [World of Warcraft].
I hope I find your silly gnome some day so we can duel, providing we're at least equal in level, for you and I are on the same realm.
Well, earlier today some people I know and I (plus two pick up folks, one of them totally rocked) went to the Wailing Caves, home of the Ree clan. Some awesome history behind it, but I don't want to spoil it for people in the game. Anyway, we were crawling down to the depths since camping is pretty inefficient, picking up various keys from minibosses. After killing an iksar, we received the big one.
Earlier before the lizard slaying we encountered a door that was locked, and none of our keys worked. The iksar's key triggered an idea: what if the key was for that? Okay then, let's try it.
Swi~ing, it opens.
In front of us we see Lord Ree, some of his concubines, blackguards, and... hell, I think a goblin wolf trainer? Worg? Don't remember exactly. Anyway. Our crusader tried to pull the blackguard, but it said he wasn't an enemy.
Now, before you go WTF, this is intentional. It's what I like to call a mini raid encounter.
After resting, we step into the room. Or rather, our other crusader does. Oops. *grin* The blackguards become hostile and pounce on her. About four in total. We weren't prepared for this, so we pretty much entered the battle without any real tactics. One of the group members, I believe it was one of our healers, yelled "Do the heal HO!", in the middle of the fight. Everyone was on one blackguard, I was juggling stuns and mezzes to keep the other three locked down.
A HO, you say? Well, for the people who don't really know the bad part about HOs, it's that anything can interrupt the starter. That is, once you use the initial starter power, if someone casts/uses a move that doesn't link with it, the HO is lost. Gone. Until someone starts up another. This is why pick up groups can suck. A lot.
My druidic friend called the heals, leaving Seyna (Falaanla) to the HO work.
For the rest of the encounter, this consisted of me telling Seyna to nuke, letting me land the starter on time, while juggling mezzes and stuns in the meanwhile. Adrenaline. I don't think I've ever encountered this in an MMOG. Ever.
Did I mention this encounter was meant for two groups? And we were one party. A cleric, summoner, enchanter, druid, and two crusaders. I didn't expect us to last through the first wave.
I was wrong.
We slaughtered them as if we were a raid force, just because of the timing of the HOs, keeping our power and health replenished. The blackguards eventually dropped. Cheering and dancing and popping open a bottle of champagne shortly followed. Actually, I lied. Once the blackguards died, the wolf master and his pets became hostile. Shit.
Resume the juggling and the HO work. We eventually dropped the wolves, leaving the goblin master left. "Go." "Go." "Go." is all I kept saying in tells to Fal throughout this ordeal. Sometimes the HO would trigger a damage one, which led me to cursing the random system. Mm, nolstagia.
The wolves died. What came next? The concubines and Lord Ree himself. Oh, but these weren't ordinary human concubines. They shed their skin and turned out to be skeletons. With Lord Ree accompanying them.
This is where we learned that level 14-15 is probably a bit too low.
My mez wouldn't land on Lord Ree just because he was Yellow^^^ GroupX2 (EQ2 lingo lol). And we had this system where we'd take out the followers before the leader himself, to lower overall damage. Us, using logic? Nonsense. However, we didn't expect Lord Ree to be insane. Well, actually, we should have, but we did so damned well before we got a bit cocky.
Needless to say, we wiped. And it was the best damned wipe ever. I'd do it over again, despite the experience debt.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@
And yeah, I think it was me that shouted to start doing the Arcane Chalice HO. That one so owns.
Clerics have the uberest heal btw. Plate n' Chalice (aka Bestowal of Vitae).
Cast it on a party member. Someone hits him. Oops, he gains life. Get hit for 10? Gain 47 life, netting 37 total. Nice little spell. Falaanla Marr fucked around with this message on 11-13-2004 at 09:37 PM. Great for tanks and casters that run in circles when being chased.
(Btw I JUST hit 15, so you're not behind at all 
) Sorry about the lack of shadows, don't have em on during groups usually.
Some people may wonder about the whips. They're very sexy. I can't even begin to explain how smooth the animation is. Tried getting a good shot but I couldn't.
Typical battles in EQ2.
My ego boost XDDD
My latest staff has a cool bo animation. I rock.
Ok, EQ2 is still plagued by dorky helms (leather and cloth), but you can turn yours off by typing /showhood if you wish. That's what I do.
I hate having an HO pop up and just not get done in a timely manner that forces me as a scout to "switch" it. Then it just sits there again if it blesses us with the same combo again.
People don't understand take out the adds first, forcing all DPS classes to power burn. Generally the adds can be soloed up to yellow encounters, the "pack leader" just had to be controlled by a tank. And not only soloed, but completely owned type soloing. To put it into perspective... During an encounter my entire group ran oop, but I got a mini-ding (refreshes HP and Power) before the last add was killed and I romped it faster then all the other adds when we were praying for enough power to do a move or cast a spell because we focused on the big guy first. This is partially because noone had enough power to interrupt my HO chains and I got several good rolls.
Things I like:
1. Immersive Scenery:
Great googly moogly...I haven't seen Qeynos yet, but if it's half as badass as Freeport, mama mia. Essentially, in the time difference between EQ and EQ2's era, the world fell apart. The gods withdrew, Luclin blew up, avatars may or may not be wandering around, there was a war that Freeport and Qeynos had to fight together on, and in the end, you end up with two polarized nation-states. On the one hand, you have Qeynos; paragon of the good virtues; piety, justice, etc. On the other hand you have Freeport, which is where all the evil races ran to when the shit hit the fan. Lucan D'lere is the Overlord...and I gather he's also undead in some fashion (hence the fact a mere human has lived for over 500 years despite getting ganked constantly in EQ).
Lucan's regime is like the fantasy world version of Communist Dictatorship. It's LAWFUL EVIL in the extreme, and everything in the city supports it just by appearance. Everything is dirty, oppressive, intimidating. And that's even without the flavor text from people, the attitude, etc. It's immersive. It's creepy, it's depressing, and it's evilly appealing when you realize you're going to be one of the movers and shakers. Evil is seductive in this game at the same time as it's oppressive and disturbing.
Likewise, there's a very real sense of completeness here. At best, EQ's cities had to be, by definition, representative cities. In theory, there were farmlands on the Karanas, in theory there were cows barbarians got their helmets' horns from. In theory, the major cities must've traded with one another. In theory, there were more people in the entire world than the 200,000 players in EQ and the NPC denizens of the cities. Right?
Well in EQ, you see a lot of that. You still don't see EVERY SINGLE civilian in the city, but there is the looming sense that they're there. You see civilians who exist for no other reason to be NPC civilians. They express opinions of you, of the government, of their surroundings. Sure it's all canned recordings, but it's THERE, which is very enriching to the game in and of itself. In fact, since EVERYONE, even people who don't give you quests or aren't INVOLVED in quests speaks to you, bumping into an NPC guard out in the Commonlands who couldn't speak and instead shrugged helplessly was an experience in and of itself that made me realize how immersed I really was.
It's very much a more complete game world in the big city than in EQ. I look forward to venturing out and seeing more of the game world.
2. Graphic worth:
Okay...In all games, we strive for realism. We understand that a certain amount of leeway has to be granted given the technical limitations of models and so forth, but we strive for realism. EQ 1, when it came out, was a pretty cutting edge game. Personalized styles were better than in most previous games, but still fairly limited. Faces were limited to a few static choices until Luclin, and even with Luclin the new models were fairly limited. The new EQ graphics engine attempted to fix a lot of that, adding shadows and so forth, but compared to EQ 2, you might as well be playing Double Dragon on an arcade machine.
Combinations of gear make it so that aside from newbie isle, I haven't seen many people who looked the same. Granted, as a game grows and more people fill out the higher echelons of power, you'll see more homogenization, but for now it's amazingly varied just with the basic few types of gear really financially accessible to the newbies. Shadowing is amazing, and graphics for things like Sneak are great (you turn into a translucent version of yourself visible only to people in your group). Faces are insanely personalizeable now, as are things like skin tone, base "naked" model clothing coloration, as well as tattoos, accessories, hair style, shape and slant of ears, eyes, width and length of chin, nose, cheeks, etc.
3. Gameplay
EQ2 so far hasn't disappointed me. The controls are similar enough to EQ to still trigger your "EQ control reflexes" (I find myself stabbing the backspace key to try and bring up the map, for instance), but different enough to keep things interesting.
Take combat, for instance. You can't afford to hit auto attack and walk away for a sandwich. You can't afford to mindlessly twiddle the keys. You have to mind what's flashing and what's not, because while you can survive mindlessly twiddling your special attack keys (looks like you get new stuff every level), you THRIVE when you combo your attacks, either with your own other attacks, or with the attacks of your friends. Cross additions from Legend of Dragoon with Techs from Chrono Trigger and you have some idea of what's going on.
Likewise, near as I can tell, tradeskilling is a lot more immersive. For one thing, there seems to be an insane number of recipes out there, and they all have definite uses, from what I've seen. Likewise, the creation process is more involved than twiddling the "Combine" and "Autoinventory" keys. At the same time, no more manually moving reagents around. If you have them on you, great. It auto-spends them.
More tomorrow...including the few nitpicky things I would complain about. But for now, sleep.
sigpic courtesy of This Guy, original modified by me
Really fun game, though...enjoying it a lot so far.
Tonight I shall become a monk! I also found a guild to level with and we are making server/gamewide firsts every night now. Tons of fun. It feels like EQ1quote:
-Yuri- Model 2000 was programmed to say:
The game is amazingTonight I shall become a monk! I also found a guild to level with and we are making server/gamewide firsts every night now. Tons of fun. It feels like EQ1
Oh, Yuri, not sure if you knew this but your NPC is part of the Qeynos -> Freeport Betrayal quest. He directs the exiles to the Commonlands. 
EDIT: Another tidbit. If you're on the Freeport side, when you reach around 11-12 go to the Wailing Caves. There's a gnome right inside the entrance that sounds exactly like Zim, making references to doom and whatnot. He gives out a quest, and the reward is a Doom Stick. Addy fucked around with this message on 11-14-2004 at 04:12 PM.
...
I like Freeport more.
sigpic courtesy of This Guy, original modified by me
sigpic courtesy of This Guy, original modified by me
I think I'm finally "getting" it, and I imagine it'll become a bit easier after those first ten levels (man, did those ever suck for me).
This game is loads of fun. I have to say, I'm very very surprised.
quote:
Ja'Deth Issar Ka'bael had this to say about Duck Tales:
It's not that Qeynos sucks in any fundamental way...but...it's too happy. Like...It needs Ganondorf to ride in and try to steal the Triforce or something. I like my grungy evil city better.
Disneyland.
That's what I call it.
quote:
Jania Arindelil had this to say about Tron:
Qeynos on Najena really sucks ass for lag, though. I like Freeport on Lucan much better on that regard.
IT's because Qeynos sucks on every server. More good people than evil people, so in Qeynos you've got like 60+ people PER ZONE that just sit there and idle.
Pisses me off. I'm to the point where I rarely make trips back into town now.
quote:
Densetsu thought about the meaning of life:
IT's because Qeynos sucks on every server. More good people than evil people, so in Qeynos you've got like 60+ people PER ZONE that just sit there and idle.Pisses me off. I'm to the point where I rarely make trips back into town now.
Well I'm stuck there for a bit longer finishing up some quests
I just finished my bard quest at leve 8, so once I ding 10 I'll be a Bard.
quote:
Addy wrote, obviously thinking too hard:
my job is HECTIC (managing HOs
No one said being a pimp was easy.
I had to.
Noone really knows what is happening on Faydwer currently, but before the Shattering, the Light and Dark Elves were at war for a very long time. The Light Elves eventually won when the dwarves and gnomes got involved.
Who knows what happened to Odus, but that is the forgotten continent anyway.
I went a bit nuts with getting quests, and that's really helping me decide what ones to do first, and what ones to wait on.
Monsters' names will be desplayed in their /con color. Also, monsters that are KOS will have a red outline around their names. Finally, if the monsters attack as a group, targeting one will also sub-target all the others in that group, making it easy to see how many will be in the fight.
On the subject of fights... When you attack a monster, it becomes "locked" into a fight with you. People outside your group can't attack it. They can't cast spells on it, or on you. Everyone in the fight even gets a little padlock next to their name (only seen by those outside the fight), letting people know that it's useless to try. Now, if you're getting beat down, you can use the "Yell for Help" key. That breaks the encounter, and allows anyone to jump in. However, you won't get any EXP or rewards for the fight.
Oh and
quote:
Rivervale apparently made it out ok and the Halflings are still there
MUAHAHA
Okay I haven't actually been there yet, but I have a feeling we may be surprised upon discovery of Rivervale. 
