Everquest II

Hey there

So I originally bought the retail box of Echoes of Faydwer in January 2007 and my PC at the time was pretty poor so my experience with EQ2 wasn't the best, playing on some of the lowest settings and still getting bad framerates. I resubbed in May 2007 and using the same PC managed to get to about level 22 or 23 on an Erudite Wizard but then quit again as my sub ran out and my PC still wasn't up to scratch to play the game well. So now I have upgraded my PC and it runs the game pretty damn well on the 'Very High' settings (just one below the Extreme Settings) at around 20-40FPS, give or take a few as I get some framerate dips and sometimes it goes over 40 depending on where I am. I reinstalled my EoF discs today and used the 7 day trial included in the box on another SOE account I had (so this isn't my main) and I have to say, I'm impressed with how well the game runs compared to my old experiences with it. Now I have 2 main questions if anyone could take some time to answer them.

1.) What does the future look like for EQ2? Is it worth coming back to the game (or starting) with the intention of staying here long-term, and how well do you think the game will progress from now on?

2.) If I do decide to come back full time I will be using my main account, with which I have my EoF retail key on it but as I understand, the Rise of Kunark expansion is out now. If I purchase the all-in-one RoK pack from the Station store, will I have to re-download all of the game files again or will it just download the ones I need and then I will have the original game and every expansion and adventure pack?

Thanks for your help and time.

I can answer the second question definitively, if not the first:

No, you won't have to download everything again; just the new stuff.

As for the first question. Though I've not played it in quite a while. My, outsiders, view of EQ2 is that it's popular and stable. Sort of like how EQ1 is still viable and stable. By stable, I mean that it's almost certainly not going anywhere... I imagine the day SOE starts closing MMOs, even horribly unpopular ones like MXO, is the day they leave the business altogether.

And, though its certainly not WoW, in terms of population. It has a pretty large user-base, which I think is likely to remain fairly level through the 'upcoming' releases(AoC, WAR, ect.).

Hey and welcome :)

1) To me the future of EQ2 is good. It is past its early start troubles and has been maturing quite good the last 2 years. What we will see in EQ2 is just more content, new stuff, and some tweaking of the existing. The graphics in the game is also good to be a 3+ years old game, and will last a good while more.

I would say this game is a safe bet if you want to play mmos.

2) If you have the patcher installed on your gaming rig. The patcher will download all available content and install it before you log in. What it download is based on what the station account is flagged for.