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EQ 'Shadow of Luclin' -- Pretty Graphics, Ugly Release

Posted by timothy on from the stay-in-the-shadows dept.

ajs writes: "EverQuest isn't a book or a movie, but a work of fiction that's kept a 400,000 member audience enthralled for months is worth a closer look. The most recent update to EverQuest, Shadows of Luclin, is out and of course much of the subscriber base is flocking to be the first to kill the big bad ... whatevers that lurk in the long-lost moon of Norrath. My review touches more on the release than the software, since I think that's what's truely interesting about this industry right now. But to sum up: if you play EverQuest, wait a few days or weeks and then give this a spin ... it's a ride." Read on for the rest of his account.

For starters, everyone reading this should understand that persistant gaming of various forms is here to stay. EverQuest will likely be around for at least a few more years, and its successors will probably take over the gaming industry for several reasons: first, they offer a different and more lucrative revenue model; second, they offer some intriguing secondary revenue possibilities; oh, and third, there are the players who actually seem to enjoy adding more social elements to their gaming ;-)

EverQuest has been a rocky road since day one because the people developing it have never truly understood their market (this can be evidenced by how many customer service policies have been reversed over time). Now, on the eve of their most hyped release, they have done the unthinkable: They released a product which has substantial crash-to-desktop bugs and made the update process so painful as to be impossible for many players. Now, with Quake you'd say "that's awful, but they'll fix the bugs and players of the old version will be fine for now". With EverQuest, everyone gets patched at the same time, and no one can play until it's done and works.

To give some examples: every player is now required to run Microsoft's DirectX8; Minimum memory and processor specs have gone up, and if you dare to run the new expansion you will have to have at least 256MB of RAM just for the core functionality (they provide a way to back out most of the new UI stuff for those who have 128MB of RAM, but I'm told its almost unplayable); 512MB of RAM is suggested!

Ok, so what was the first day like? Well, the servers were down for most of the day, when they were supposed to just be down for a night. Then, when they came up, it seems that Sony did not provide enough network bandwidth for the patching storm that ensued, so no one could patch (and thus, no one could play) until a crittical mass of players gave up and went to bed.

Worse, the patching program was intolerant of the network failures and would leave droppings that would prevent subsequent attempts to patch. I required 2 reboots, 5 file deletions and 2.5 hours to finally patch and run.

"So, how is it?!" you ask? Well, it's a whole lot better than it was, but it's really still not there yet. The graphics are actually disorienting because of their quality and the new hardware T&L acceleration from DX8. Turning around makes you feel like you live in the land of smooth scroll. The facial feature selection for humans is very nice, but for the Iksar (the lizard race), it's rather sketchy, and not much different from before. Horses are cheaper than some had suggested (8,000 platinum minimun). New models for summoned pets and other character-related models like "wolf form" are very slick. The new zones seem to stress their size quite a lot (it's hard to accept that humans would build on such a scale).

I've yet to see the new race, as I assumed that everyone would be starting those characters and the server would be quite slow in those zones.

There are some problems, though, and I think Verant should have held off on the release until they were finished. First is the much anticipated Bazaar zone, where players will be able to become merchants (to some degree which is not yet clear) and sell their goods automatically. This functionallity is off, and still being worked on.

Second, there appear to be a number of bugs. Teleportation while in the new zones was supposed to take characters to a central zone ("The Nexus") from which they could then teleport to their destination. (Currently, that's not the way it works: 10-20 seconds after teleporting, everyone in our party except for the person who teleported crashed to the desktop with no warning!)

There are some problems with spells. Someone pointed out to me that low-level wizard spells do not animate at all, so its hard to tell that your wizard is actually doing anything in a fight.

Overall, I'm going to give this release a 4 on a scale of 1 to 10. It's pretty and in a month, it will likely be the best MMORPG on the market, but again -- it's just not there yet. This release hurt a lot of players who didn't even want to buy the expansion yet.

Some key resources for those who are trying out Luclin are:

Enjoy!"

6 of 316 comments (clear)

  1. MUDs will live forever by Marx_Mrvelous · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Interesting to note...
    The thing that makes these games so popular and addictive is the human interaction element, not the graphics, the plot, or the monsters. I remember playing MUDs in high school that people were just as devoted to as EQ.

    So by that reasoning, the true key to a successful multiplayer RPG would be improving and rewarding actual role-playing and character interaction.

    --

    Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
    1. Re:MUDs will live forever by LinuxParanoid · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The thing that makes these games so popular and addictive is the human interaction element

      Nah, the addictive thing there is the notion of "points", which represent a goal that is easily optimized for. In EverQuest and various muds, the points are "pieces of equipment" or stats or something similar. Your brain likes optimizing for clear goals. Which is why you karma whore on /. Human interaction merely means it takes a little longer to get over your addiction... you excuse mechanisms for not quitting (I have friends there...) are stronger.

      --LP ;)

  2. Society... by don_carnage · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I never ceased to be amazed by the virtual societies that are created in massive online multiplayer games. I used to be an Asheron's Call addict because I fell in love with the idea of being able to adventure across the landscape to far away lands. I didn't really get into the role-playing aspect, but was intrigued by people that would complain about theft, treachery and the multitude of con-artists that sprung-up in game. The sheer fact that these games mirror our own society (with greed, deceipt, etc.) is truly a great technical feat!

    --
    Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
  3. Updates by ajs · · Score: 5, Informative
    Since I submitted this, there have been several developments:This is not a bad release, really. It's just pointing out a lot of the problems that games now face when everyone gets updated/patched at once. The artificial lines between people running "Luclin" and people running "the old EverQuest" are very thin....
  4. subscription software by jd142 · · Score: 5, Funny

    So basically, what you are saying is that there's a downside to subscription based software when the user has no choice about the upgrade? That the manufacturer of the subscription software can put out a buggy update and force you to take it, which means the software is useless until the fix is in. And you can be forced to upgrade your hardware instead of using existing hardware and existing software.

    Hmm. Why does this sound so very familiar.

    And you thought there wouldn't be an M$ bashing post under the evercrack story. Shame on you! This is /.

  5. A Real Review? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think this review could have focused on the actual upgrade process more. This is Eq's third major upgrade, and as far as that, they should have learned a few lessons along the way.

    The upgrade this time came in two forms: the revamping of the game engine, and the addition of SoL zones.

    The SoL zone addition was quick, easy. That they learned with the two previous expansions (kunark and velious). You stamp the zone files onto CD (three this time) and the users install and register. Voila, new zones.

    The real news this time was the game engine upgrade. They moved everything to a new engine, with lots of new XML functionality, which in turn requires a lot more hardware to play. And there's the real story, if this is a "news for nerds" story at all... How do you take an existing game, with hundreds of thousands of people in it, and upgrade its engine? What can you force people to do in terms of a hardware upgrade? More ram? More HD space? Better video card?

    Remember, we're talking about subrscribers here - people that pay Sony every month so they can play Eq. At what point is it ok to say "If you don't meet X hardware standard, you can't play."?

    In this case, Sony raised the bar rather high. Minimum is now 128mb of ram, a Nvidia Geforce card, and I think around a 500mhz processor. Quite a bit steep for a game I was able to play with a K6-2 233, Voodoo 3 2000, and 64mb of RAM. And that's now minimum specs.

    Let's face it - in a few months the bugs in the interface, the "features" they were supposed to add that didn't make it, and the "memory leaks" will be forgotten. What won't be are the people who were paying to play, up until Sony said they had to upgrade past what they were willing or able to afford. And there will be a lot of those cases.

    Those of us lucky enough to have the hardware to play it (I play on a tbird 900, Geforce 2gts 32, 512mb ram) will get to enjoy all the new features - I've been playing it steadily and have had few problems yet. But for those who don't... well, it seems Sony is saying "Tough Luck".

    Kraegar