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Everquest 2 Launches
Though it's being drowned out by the Halo 2 news, Everquest 2 officially launches today. RPG Vault has a review available for perusal, GamerFeed has a hands on look, and if you're looking for crunchy, low fat coverage Gamespy has an interview with Heather Graham about her role in the game. If you're already tripping the light fantastic in Qeynos check out GamerGod's Qeynos Quest feature, or just cut out the middle man and look forward to the first content on Allakhazam. Finally, F13 provides usefully cynical commentary about the beta and launch of the game.
"Let me warn most of you who were not in the Beta that this game is far from ready"
And this is different from every other SOE game how?
Firefox 1.0 gets released November 9th. You're off by a day.
oh its not different... I just expected more from em after all this time... They actually did a good job with the Omens of war (eq1) release, I was hoping it was a sign. Instead they went for the "must_beat_blizzard_omg_wtf_bbq" direction. eq1 has been a 4 year paid beta for me. but it was at least playable.
"why don't you just slip into something more comfortable...like a coma!"
I was in the Everquest 2 beta, and I have to say this: Its not ready !
The graphics are fine, the gameplay oddly like World of Warcraft, and some of the quests are quite nice (I was particularly fond of the reference to '8-bit-theaters' sword chucks in a quest in Freeport...) Yet the zones are to big for the servers, the lag too familar, and the stability - not so good. My opinion: The game cannot currently support the great numbers it is sure to attract.
If your fond of the pain of lag, the bitter load-time, and being overly clunky, go right ahead and buy EQ2. If you like a smooth, sweet, and overally tasty mmorpg, wait a few more weeks and get WOW.
3 degrees of separation from Vladimir Putin
No it doesn't. I had to install a windows machine just to beta test it... and tried frantically to get it working under cedega. the directx 9c req. kills it currently.
"why don't you just slip into something more comfortable...like a coma!"
EQ2 on the following:
Geforce 5500 256
AMD 2500+
512 RAM
Windows XP Pro
In order to make EQ2 playable I had to turn most options down or off. The game in turn didn't look all that spectacular.
Take your own specs and scale from there. This game is a HUGE resource hog.
Sony themselves will warn you in game if you try to max out the graphics that only about 3% of all computers can handle the full settings.
"why don't you just slip into something more comfortable...like a coma!"
Sadly however, ongoing interest in online RPG is doomed in the face of the Halo onslaught. Why are people so keen to use guns rather than brains in a game?
WoW started their open beta test today. Play WoW for free. The signups are down tonight, but should be up tomorrow.
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
This has been the history of everquest. From EQ1 all of the expansions were released with lots of bugs, and broken quests, that causes you to lose days upon days of sleep trying to figure it out after which they will finally patch somthing that wasn't working.
For instance, my guild was in Plain of Earth during the very early days of the Plains of Power expansion. Almost everything was broken, that we finally gave up and put the game aside.
After that we all became supermodel rockstars and fucked only the hottest chicks in town.
Loading is a big thing to look at when compairing the 2 games.
... they give you good exp in WoW, they are fun, and there are *TONS* of them. Many more then EQ. Funny, another game beats EverQuest with it.
EQ - Takes about 10 mins to get logged in, typical zoning which takes forever. Just like EQ1.
WoW - Takes about 1 min from loading the game, to actually play the game. There is no zoning, unless you take a large leap across the map, which still only takes 3 secs to load.
Not talking about char creation. Talking about going from the desktop, to getting into the game with an already made char.
All in all, WoW totally beats EQ2. Heres why:
- Can play WoW on older machines without much trouble.
- WoW has PVP. Not something as an after though, the game was designed with it in mind. Something Sony has never done with there games.
- Graphics wise, EQ2 has crazy requirements. Even with the best computers, putting more then 30 people in the same place at the same time will bog down BAD. WoW still looks very nice, the graphics are a little simpler which makes playing much more reasonable.
- Quests
- EQ is a grind game, spend tons and tons of hours doing nothing but killing the same mobs over and over again. In WoW, you can grind it out, or you can do quests, or both. There is no limit.
- Customer service at Sony blows, this will NEVER change. They simply don't care.
- Sony still doesn't understand the purpose of beta. They rather nerf everything bad after release and totally change the game. Blizzard at least has the common sense to make those changes durring beta.
- Sony tends to just rip ideas rather then create there own.
- The interface in WoW is MUCH easier to use and more complete. Not to mention, they actually give you an entire langauge to create the interface. Sony gives you access to simple XML files to move things around, not change how it works differently.
- Sony has a long habbit of not fixing things. I mean come on, there are thigns in EQ1 that STILL haven't been fixed in *3* years!
- EQ2 zerg vs WoW strategy is an interesting one. - EQ2 has tons of downtime, just like EQ1. WoW they removed that by adding things like drinks and fast respawns to get you moving faster.
There are tons more, just don't wanna type them all. Plan and simple, Sony isn't getting another dime from me. Not after all the shit they put me through for 4 years.
Try WoW, you will be suprised.
until (succeed) try { again(); }
I think you have your games pretty seriously mixed up... Dragon Warrior is *not* EQ. EQ[12] is a massively multiplayer game, and has never run on anything other than a PC. There is a spinoff for the PS2... but thats another story.
The game servers themselves are just fine. The web server and the game servers are not related.
I'd be more concerned if they were to put all their efforts into the webserver, rather than keep the game working right.
He's VERY casual. It's not a challenge to hit 25 in a week if you don't have anything else to do. Hitting level ten, the point at which you really get into the game, takes about 6 hours, I'd say. Past that it depends on play style. You can max level (60) in a month, if you really want to. And they're working hard to make sure that character will still have plenty to do afterwards.
THe nice thing about the game is that it makes an attempt to cater to everybody. It doesn't succeed fully, of course, because that's just impossible, but it comes much closer than I expected.
A friend of mine sent me this excellent criticism of EverQuest 2 written by an EverQuest MVP Beta Tester. The thread is long but the writer is well spoken and she goes into great depth about all aspects of game play, their strengths, and their [numerous, critical] flaws:
http://eq2.forums.thedruidsgrove.org/showthread.ph p?t=7973&page=1&pp=15
This is a must-read thread for anyone even remotely thinking of dropping money on this game.
We pushed it to the last minute, but we're up now. http://eq2.allakhazam.com