Slashdot Mirror
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.
Despite the obligatory misleading text in the Slashdot header (patent pending)... The RPG vault article is NOT a review. Heck, they aren't even willing to call it a preview. Its a "first first impression piece" and very low on content.
Paid beta is a PERMANENT condition in MMORPGs.
;)
You should nkow that by now
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
And while EQ1 may have been they game that ruled them all (for a while) EQ2 is hopefully going to be a major failure for SoE.
Why? Well in game play terms its a massive step backwards...locked encounters, limited number of classes (basically 4 with a bit of flavouring to make it look like more),poor options for solo play, no pvp etc. etc.
I couldnt help but feel that the game was designed by SoEs accounts and customer service departments with the sole purpose of minimising the main reasons for CS calls....Oh but it IS visually STUNNING and almost up there with morrowwind in the audio department, but even so I couldnt help but feel it was the most shallow gameplay experience I had in many years.
Part of the fun of online games is doing things for the first time. If you wait a year, yes you may avoid a few bugs but you will be missing out on the most interesting time of the game when everything is new and exciting.
Except that with SOE's tendency toward "supermodel" releases (they look pretty but have no content), you won't miss the opportunity to do all that new stuff until at *least* six months after launch.
You'll just not be sick of staring at the prettiness when you do finally jump in.
In other news, you can finally fly spacecraft in SWG, just 200% longer after release than originally stated...
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
Where it takes a real time year to get from level 1 to 50? (As opposed to a the month it should take)
;-) and I'm level 25 (almost 26!) which seems about right to me. If I get a solid block of a few hours and a good group, and I have a lot of rested exp saved up, I can get a level or so in one sitting... that feels about right. I make enough progress to feel like I got somewhere even when I can't dedicate a whole lot of time, but it's not so quick as to feel trivial when I get a new level. The pacing is really quite good as far as I'm concerned.
"Should" according to...?
A year is probably too long, but a month is way too short, for my satisfaction. I've been playing WoW for a couple months, very casually, because I have a four-month-old baby to take care of
Now, if you have no life, and play 40 hours a week in long uninterrupted blocks, you might make 50 in a month. But I wouldn't want to be you, if that was the case.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
Beta has to be a permanent condition, it is hugely organic process in adaptation of the code to match the players.
The first release will, and can only be, a best guess to how the game will react under such continuous, and unpredictable user behaviour.
Now, I'm the first to say that an MMOG is never finished; if it is, there's something wrong. I basically agree with your statement. BUT...
After being in the EQ Luclin beta, and playing on Test server for 2 years, and playing the last bit of beta and the first several months of release of SWG, and then playing a bit of the WoW beta, I've come to realize that you really, really, REALLY can do better than SOE at creating a game. Yes, it is possible to realize that people are going to exploit something and fix it in advance sometimes. Better yet, it is actually possible that, even when you *didn't* forsee an exploit, you can fix it RIGHT AWAY, rather than simply penalizing people randomly and capriciously for using it for months before breaking the exploited thing as to make it not useful to anyone.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?