Originally posted by Moirae

Originally posted by ohreally

Originally posted by Moirae

If you're just going to make a "I hate soe" post, then please don't. I'll  see how the expansion is, then I'll rate it. Its the adult thing to do.

So my opinion is meaningless but yours is just fine? The adult thing to do is to tell SOE what's wrong with their game and expect that they fix it for their customers....The childish thing to do is just play the game and think it's just fine, no matter how broken or incomplete it is....

No, I'm sick of hearing the whining. If you don't like the game, either leave it, or go complain to the people that actually matter.

Now you know better than that...SOE doesn't allow complaints on the official EQ2 boards. Their MIB moderators will lock the thread and warn you...a few warnings and you get a suspension...

I will continue to post here and complain here...The SOE developers read these boards as much as they read their own forums....

You can go on licking their boots....

Originally posted by ohreally

I will continue to post here and complain here...The SOE developers read these boards as much as they read their own forums....

 

Not only this, but they send their employees in disguise to try to balance out the negative opinions.
Problem is, it isn't working, their games are still quite average at the very least, and there is no good hype that can change that.

They should put all of their effort in making sure the "changes" they do to their games don't piss off their current customer base, which apparently is their speciality.
No publisher has the ability to aggro so much their customers as SoE, maybe they should look into that instead of unleash their employees on several forums to defend their very average games.

Sigh... my relationship with EQ2 is one of love-hate. On the one hand as a games from day one with breaks (some larger) I always returned because of the complex and diverse gameplay.

However, I realized, when somehow over time I lost the big community network in the game I used to have - for many reasons - the result is that most of the content I can never see. At this moment most player only group with those they know, and I found myself being litterlly logged in for HOURS seeking a group for any of my chars in vain for weeks. Its aiways the same, I log in, seek a group, set myself to LFG, ask in channels - hours pass with waiting and reading a book, and I log off without a group. Now you might say join a big guild, but thats out of the question, since I am in my small guild of close friends, but those are too few, and so I am back where I was.

EQ2 has always only been for those with a big ingame network and a HIGH amount of monthly scheduling to coordinate the vearious quests. These days of spontaneous gaming this kind of "professional" gaming reminds me too much of work. I want to log in and have fun right away, and you can FORGET that in EQ2. Not to mention that a vast number of quests is almost not to be solved without looking for a guide in the internet, like "find an efreet in Lavastorm to talk to". Yeah. Thats precise... Sure, you can look at Allakhazham or ask, but it kinda takes the immersity out for me. EQ2 is a good game, but the subscriber numbers always show the fundamental flaw, that most casual gamers will not see 80% of all those shiny new areas anyways. A pity.

As someone who has a deep running hate against the existence of raids, I bemoan that there will be even more. I really wish raids would vanish from the MMO world, and it would be back on the track what a MMO is meant to be: a game for a small group of people, not soloism, not raids, end of the story. While soloism does not SO much damage (it does enough by corroding the community spirit, which NEED that people depend on others!), raids lead to a "class society": there are players and uber players with raid guilds in their back. The quality of gear should not be determined by the number of people he knows in a game! For any normal player - I am not taking about casual here, just those with medium time investment - those uber raid gear pieces will always be out of reach. I just don't see the reason in giving people better loot for an unhealthy and unreasonable playstyle, which the raid-madness just IS.

Originally posted by nakuma

not to mention the game runs like crap even on high end systems due to lack of multi core and SLi support.

I dont play EQ2 any more ad I dont think I'll play it. But in a Nvidia 7900 GS, 2 gigs ram, AMD Athlon dual core 2,0ghz runs really fine. So no, the game doesnt run like crap. Not anymore. This issue is an issue from the past, in older computers.

"A new Dungeon Delving mission system for players to replay content with new and different experiences."
 

Yep, with that one sentence its gotta be exactly like LDON. That is the info ur using to assume its exactly like LDON, right, Ohreally? And even if it is like LDON, who cares, alot of ppl liked it back then and its been something alot of ppl wanted to be added to EQ2.

"I didn't played lot of zones (even from previous expansions), cause there is too much choice."

Complaining about too much choice? So u would rather it be one zone for each tier? yea, that wont get boring.

"What ever happened to the 4-5 adventure packs and 2 full expansions per year they promised us at release>??"

They have said that goin to one expansion a year would improve on the amount of content. Also it gives them more time to work on the expansion, so they arent as rushed as the ones that came out during the 2/year era. As for the adventure packs, I dont think they really took off like they hoped, most of those adventure pack zones are ghost towns.

"So my opinion is meaningless but yours is just fine? "

Actually, what the person was saying was, to put it simple, "Dont knock it before you try it." 

"Right.....well you go right ahead and spend $50 on the expansion and then rate it...Do you think SOE will give a rat's ass what you think after you have spent the money? um...NOOOO they won't give a F*CK about you or your opinion....they got what they wanted..another sucker to send them $15 a month"

I dont think SOE makes their profit on box sales. I think their profit comes from Subscription fees. So, yes, I do think they will care about what their customers think about their expansion, because if ppl cancel their sub, then less money for them.

"Did you play EQ1? This expansion sounds like a complete clone of Lost Dundeons of Norrath expansion. Level scaling instances that dropped good looking but inferior items and completing the instances earned you gems or some crap to trade for good looking but totally inferior armor and weapons.....This is just  more pure laziness from the EQ2 developers. They don't have the imagination to come up with new and exciting expansions so they rehash stuff from the previous version of the game..How lame is that? Are you going to pay $50 for an expansion that was released 7 years ago in another form? "

Where did you get the info that The Shadow Odyssey is like this? plz post link.

 Just some info to some of your questions there, Ohreally. Some clarification, too.

Looking forward to it quite a bit.....Echoes and Kunark were both excellent.

Originally posted by alakram

Originally posted by nakuma

not to mention the game runs like crap even on high end systems due to lack of multi core and SLi support.

 

I dont play EQ2 any more ad I dont think I'll play it. But in a Nvidia 7900 GS, 2 gigs ram, AMD Athlon dual core 2,0ghz runs really fine. So no, the game doesnt run like crap. Not anymore. This issue is an issue from the past, in older computers.

Right...so my 8600 should be able to get more than 15-20 FPS on a 3 month old high end machine? Old problem my ass....there are tons of new posts in the official tech support forums that say differently, but thanks for playing..

Originally posted by mdolsen

Looking forward to it quite a bit.....Echoes and Kunark were both excellent.

RoK just about killed this game....the ability to solo quest 10 levels destroyed grouping, the itemization is horrible, the reuse of old character models makes the game boring, if you aren't a member of a high end raid guild you will never achieve the mythical epic unless you pay some guild to take you...but other than that the expansion was excellent.....not...

SOE expansion logic is fubar.  They continue to add more zones and content while most of Norrath goes unused and gets left behind.  If they spent the extra time improving on the game engine instead of adding more content I think a lot more people would be happy in the long run.

Originally posted by permster

SOE expansion logic is fubar.  They continue to add more zones and content while most of Norrath goes unused and gets left behind.  If they spent the extra time improving on the game engine instead of adding more content I think a lot more people would be happy in the long run.

It's FUBAR because SOE won't allow their precious resources redo the game. it's obvious from a business perspective what's happening here. SOE is milking EQ2 for everything they can get from it. To do that they have to curtail most activity that would cost them money...In other words, they are trying to get as much bang from their buck as they can. In order to do that, they have been reusing character models and old content in new expansions, limiting the number of expansions to one a year and totally shut down their adventure pack developement. Sonce SOE hasn't announced a major release in the last few years, my guess is they are using most of their resources to design something new (and secret) and using dying games such as EQ1 and EQ2 to finance the work. Since both of those games now have lost a large protion of their player base, money is tight. I would look for a new, major game release from SOE in 12-18 months...about teh time they figure they can either pull the plug on EQ1 or sell it to another comapney who will try to continue to milk it for a small profit. EQ2 won't be far behind. From the looks of things, EQ1 still has a bit larger player base than EQ2 so those 2 might be reversed....At any rate, SOE can't keep these games around for ever. Unlike most game developement companies, SOE is forced to turn a profit. They are a publically traded company and as such they are beholding to the Sony board of directors and the share holders....so once these games no longer make money they are gone...or at least sold off to someone else...

so what is your ideal expansion OhReally? or are you just one of those rabid SOE hating dumbasses that treats SOE as the devil and curses everything they do?

To me this expac seems pretty ideal

More AAs instead of upping the level cap
more heritage quests
4 progressive raid zones
new persistant/instanced dungeons for groups of all levels of play
no more running the same dungeon a billion times HOPING the item you want will drop.

sounds good to me.

not completely sure about this expansion. but i guss they are at least trying to give players what the wanted most after rok. people complained a lot that rok was too much solo focused so this expansion is focussing most about dungeons which usually need groups.

many players did not want a level  increase, so adding new achievemnt tree and increasing achievement cap is also mainly what people wanted.

raiders probably won't be too happy about only 4 raid instances (3 bigger zones and 1 small one) and only one new avatar as only new contested,  it will depend on difficulty and size of the 3 bigger zones how much raiding content it has.

overall  the announcement wasn't that much a thing to get me excited as eof or rok anouncements. but rok sounded much better in theory than it was in reality for me so maybe this one will be better once it goes live than the anouncement made it.

I am waiting for expansion beta and hopefully i get a space there, if not then i will wiat till nda gets dropped and i can hear from players that played before i make my judgement on this expansion.

I would have to agree with OhReally on this one.  Taking what some others have said in the past, EQ2 is now in maintenance mode and has been for quite some time.  They won't put any real effort into re-engineering the game and most of their devs have moved on to other projects.  Leaving behind a small staff to maintain the game.

The SOE expansion model is a rinse and repeat process which is good for spitting out expansions every year, but leaves little room for new and innovative ideas.  I expected more from EQ2, but perhaps the game engine itself hinders creativity and originality.

By the way, I still have an active sub to EQ2 so don't take me for a hater.  It's the only mmorpg I play currently because I love the EQ lore.  I just wanted more...

Originally posted by ohreally

Originally posted by alakram

Originally posted by nakuma

not to mention the game runs like crap even on high end systems due to lack of multi core and SLi support.

 

I dont play EQ2 any more ad I dont think I'll play it. But in a Nvidia 7900 GS, 2 gigs ram, AMD Athlon dual core 2,0ghz runs really fine. So no, the game doesnt run like crap. Not anymore. This issue is an issue from the past, in older computers.

 

Right...so my 8600 should be able to get more than 15-20 FPS on a 3 month old high end machine? Old problem my ass....there are tons of new posts in the official tech support forums that say differently, but thanks for playing..

ohreally, a couple things first if you are running a single 8600 even if you box is 3 months old it is far from a high end system. However you should be able to get a much better fps then your 15-20. If it even matters to you I started a thread in the EQ2 forums here about graphic setting that may help. I post a lot of screens of EQ2 here to show how good it can look. I have gotten a lot of e-mails wanting to know how come it looks so good on my sytem and some e-mails simple call me a liar. So I started the thread to help others setup their graphic options better. You might check it out. EQ2 is trickv no doubt about it but if you do your homework a player can get it to run pretty well on mid range systems like yours. It is unfortunate you have to work that hard to get it working right but it is possible to get EQ2 looking and playing really well.

i Have a duel core OC to 3.6

2 x raptor 74 Gig HD ( Raid 0)

8800GTX OC

I have no problem at all running it on extreme ***i even move some silders even higher after putting it on extreme** and i can pull 25 to 45 FPS ***and sometimes higher***. So if you cant pull more then what you are saying with your rig... maybe its not so much the game but the person behind the PC.

I do agree that the game would run much smoother if they re-work the engine but to say you can only get 15-20FPS.....

As a Side note i have AA set to 16 and my AF set to 16 which also kills FPS.

Here is a SS and its set to extreme and if you look at the FPS (top of the screen towards the middle) you can see what im pulling.

I know its hard to see but its 40 FPS

My fps tends to vary between 15 and 20 in the city's and 40 or higher out in the big open areas.

Originally posted by Yunbei

As someone who has a deep running hate against the existence of raids, I bemoan that there will be even more. I really wish raids would vanish from the MMO world, and it would be back on the track what a MMO is meant to be: a game for a small group of people, not soloism, not raids, end of the story.

You should check out Dungeons and Dragons Online - they've kept the focus on single-group adventuring, and I love that.  Still, EQ2 is not so bad in this respect.  Most have followed the EQ1 template, where its really ALL about the raiding,  EQ2 has kept a better balance so far, and I hope that continues with the new expansion,  Since the dungeons SCALE, they provide content on the high end too, and single-groupable.  If we have stuff to do that gives us meaningful rewards, I have no problem with the raiders getting their candy, too.  Yeah, there's that class thing - but its the raid content that requires raid gear.  As long as we can improve our characters, its all good, and don't forget the new AA's - no raid required.

Originally posted by nakuma

not to mention the game runs like crap even on high end systems due to lack of multi core and SLi support.

Intel Core2 Duo E6750, 8800 GTS (G92), 4GB RAM - maybe not the ultimate, but not TOO bad lol.  EQ2 runs on highest settings with quite acceptable performance, and looks great too.  Could be that it chokes on SLI, but thats a driver problem, right?  I don't think multi-cores are really a problem.  I can run Vanguard with everything maxed too, and no multi-core support there either.

Upgrading the graphics engine is a big, expensive deal.  I don't know if we're going to see that for these older games.  It looks a helluva lot better than EQ1's Norrath, and that's good enough for me.

Originally posted by Yunbei

Sigh... my relationship with EQ2 is one of love-hate. On the one hand as a games from day one with breaks (some larger) I always returned because of the complex and diverse gameplay.

However, I realized, when somehow over time I lost the big community network in the game I used to have - for many reasons - the result is that most of the content I can never see. At this moment most player only group with those they know, and I found myself being litterlly logged in for HOURS seeking a group for any of my chars in vain for weeks. Its aiways the same, I log in, seek a group, set myself to LFG, ask in channels - hours pass with waiting and reading a book, and I log off without a group. Now you might say join a big guild, but thats out of the question, since I am in my small guild of close friends, but those are too few, and so I am back where I was.

EQ2 has always only been for those with a big ingame network and a HIGH amount of monthly scheduling to coordinate the vearious quests. These days of spontaneous gaming this kind of "professional" gaming reminds me too much of work. I want to log in and have fun right away, and you can FORGET that in EQ2. Not to mention that a vast number of quests is almost not to be solved without looking for a guide in the internet, like "find an efreet in Lavastorm to talk to". Yeah. Thats precise... Sure, you can look at Allakhazham or ask, but it kinda takes the immersity out for me. EQ2 is a good game, but the subscriber numbers always show the fundamental flaw, that most casual gamers will not see 80% of all those shiny new areas anyways. A pity.

As someone who has a deep running hate against the existence of raids, I bemoan that there will be even more. I really wish raids would vanish from the MMO world, and it would be back on the track what a MMO is meant to be: a game for a small group of people, not soloism, not raids, end of the story. While soloism does not SO much damage (it does enough by corroding the community spirit, which NEED that people depend on others!), raids lead to a "class society": there are players and uber players with raid guilds in their back. The quality of gear should not be determined by the number of people he knows in a game! For any normal player - I am not taking about casual here, just those with medium time investment - those uber raid gear pieces will always be out of reach. I just don't see the reason in giving people better loot for an unhealthy and unreasonable playstyle, which the raid-madness just IS.

/Agree totally

It's what ruined my love affair with WoW *sniffle*

I cant see it ever changing in the future. I think casual gamers are a dying breed in the MMO world