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EverQuest 2 Beta Confirmed, Producer Quizzed
Kemanorel writes "After a couple years of development, several months of hints and previews, and four weeks worth of drooling after a live demo in Vegas, Sony Online announced that EverQuest 2 Beta sign-ups begin next Monday. Minimum specs are 1 GHz processor, 512 MB RAM, and a DX9 compatible video card with at least 64 MB of memory - not too bad. Get in line now!" There's also an interview with EverQuest II producer John Blakely over at GameSpot in which he mentions: "Currently we have over 80 people working on the EQII development team", before arguing that the sequel shouldn't necessarily siphon players from the original: "EQII is being designed to complement EQ in terms of the gameplay experience. EQII is a game that will focus most of our content on the individual and smaller groups, while EQ's endgame encourages large raid forces to play the high-level content."
Remember when you look at the specs, the actual game won't be coming out for a while. So it's probably not as bad as it seems.
This sig is only here so people stop skipping the last lines of my posts.
EQII is a game that will focus most of our content on the individual and smaller groups, while EQ's endgame encourages large raid forces to play the high-level content.
Translation: the EQ2 client/server chokes on large number of people in the same place at the same time.
For great justice.
These specs will never run the game at a decent enough level to participate in raids and the like. Currently 1 GB of ram is being prescribed for most latancy issues. If SWG is using a lesser engine and they are having problems than I could not imagine that Everquest 2 will run on anything less than that.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
The MMORPG is here to stay! And here's another one. This one of course is a biggie.
But what will happen in the market?
Will all the EQ players upgrade to EQ2?
Will nobody upgrade to EQ2?
Or will all the players feel rich and buy time on both EQ and EQ2?
What about all the other MMORPG's coming out? Will they steal time off EQ? Is the MMORPG market saturated yet?
And, here's the one I really want to know about, will the open source community make their own sleek, efficient and free MMORPG that runs efficiently on a 286?
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
EQII is a game that will focus most of our content on the individual and smaller groups, while EQ's endgame encourages large raid forces to play the high-level content.
This just means the gfx engine can't handle the amounts of people it requires to create anything what made EQ great.
Jesus, it also looks ghastly.
With the behemoth World of Warcraft looming over the genre I forsee that the only reason this project might not flop would be the well known IP.
that just means it will barely run ie lowest resulution looking like heres the true specs from the site recommended: Operating System: Windows 98/2000/ME/XP Processor: 2 Ghz or greater RAM: 1 GB 16x CD-ROM or DVD-ROM Video Card: DirectX 9 compatible. Pixel shader and Vertex shader compatible hardware with 128 MB of texture memory or greater Sound Card: DirectSound compatible audio hardware that sounds alot more belivable
It looked awsome, and no choppiness with quite a few people all together fighting.
They also accidentally ran it on a 512 mb system, on which is was a little choppy. But looks isn't everything.
In case you are interested in viewing the website without installing Flash, the detection is done in JavaScript, so disabling JavaScript prevents your browser from being redirected to their no flash page.
SWG cannot be run at 800x600, the minimum is 1024x768
Making the moon less necessary since 1998.
/posts this link and opens the floor to comments
** A Sketch a Week **
http://www.sketchplease.com
Great picture, I want to be her! I don't know if my computer meets the specs though...
3D graphics are icing on the cake for a game like EQ or EQ II.
The most important aspect of a game like EQ or EQ II is the sense of "community" one gains while playing it. EQ has possibly the worst graphics of all the popular online role playing games, except for the oldest and largest of them which are completely text-based, so obviously cutting edge 3D graphics isn't as important a selling point as everyone here seems to think because EQ is still one of the most popular, if not the most popular, games in its sub-genre.
If EQ's capabilities for communications and community building equal or surpass EQ, it will do just fine, providing SOE marketing doesn't fall flat on its face. If inter-personal interactions weren't given the highest priority by the designers, followed by sensible game design, it will fail.
Eq is a flawed game. Current mmo game design is time = power. Its a stupid premise and if there wasnt people in the world that have way to much free time on their hands it would fail. The genre can never break mainstream as long as it follows this formula. Except, of course, in korea.
I still remember buying everquest the day it came out, and taking the box with the pornographic elphette home, doing the install, then trying to log on for the next two days unsuccessfully.
:)
Oh yes, I can't wait to see what a clusterfuck Neverquest2's launch will be, but I'll watch from the sidelines this time.
All of those screenshots you linked to are of women. Is it really suprising that the programmers took a little extra time to make the female avatars look good?
I interpreted the original comment that the game looks ghastly to be a reflection on the "style" of the game.
For example:
EQ2 trees
WoW trees
Basically I see this as a problem I had when I was taking art classes: I'm a perfectionist. I love everything to have nice sharp lines.
That's the EQ2 way (from what I've seen).
Conversly I can't describe the WoW way (I sucked at art, thus I can't pick out what is right). But I know that it doesn't look like a static computer generated world.
Oh NO. NOOO!I just read what I wrote. Somewhere in those lines up there I became a WoW zealot. GAH! HELP!
Ok, they say the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. Right?
help me!
(Karma = auto -1)
It'll be interesting to see if they can indeed keep the gameplay at high levels tailored to soloing/small groups rather than the need for mass guild raids. I would suspect a lot of players get turned off of EQ1 for the sole reason that they don't play enough or have the time to deal with being in a guild. Without a guild, leveling at the high end is almost impossible. I guess by keeping the focus on the smaller party or solo system, they're hoping to keep more casual players longer.
Do the graphics bother anybody else? It's the strangest thing... I keep thinking that they look almost identical to early episodes of Reboot and the prerendered sprites of Might & Magic VI (example). Despite them being fairly cutting edge graphics, my brain keeps telling me "This is so 1998."
Press Release: http://www.sonyonline.com/corp/press_releases/0426 04_EQ2_beta_announcement.html
There *is* a reason they're called Wood Elves, you know.................