Fun and Games and EQ2 and a serious question

Morpgeus

Hello all,

For two specific reasons I will mention a bit later, I include below a post that was once on the EQ2 forums. It has recently been removed, but that is not due to some kind of censorship I think - it had been there quite a bit., and served it's purpose at the time (an informal complaint).

The first reason it is here is quite selfish, but then again this is the place to go for help and that is the extent of my selfishness: I would like very much to know how the 'bug' and 'major quest problems' situation is in EverQuest  *at this moment*, since I have been a way for a long while now and would much like to pick up where I left off some time soon.

NOTE: I also would very much like to know if there are still bots in the game - this would prevent my return, I refuse to compete with those who wreck a game and engage not-yet-spawned monsters just to make money off of selling - etc., you get the picture .

The second reason is: the post is here for your amusement, since it is mostly a humurous outlet (I do not do the 'flame' thing) of my frustrations with the game *at the time*.

Soooo...any and all thoughts on that: much appreciated

Lucas

PS Note there is a sort of intro; can skp that if you like. Note please that the URL is now invalid.

PPS Edits by me never on content, only typo's/style etc.

 

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A Gentle Rage - EQ2 and the future.

 

The Note

 

            I have posted a previous ‘raw’ version of this thread at http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=Newbie&message.id=124614. My suggestion is to ignore that one; I was not aware at the time of writing (was my first post on these boards) that you had to be ‘newbie’ rank to react and so I have decided to post here (because there appears not to be a ‘general gameplay’ distinction and this post is a good deal about, but not restricted to, quest issues) the final, improved, more relevant version - where any and all can react.

Now pwettie pweeze wif sjougar-on-topless: stay positive (contributing to discussion, that is).

 

This ladies & gents is a gentle rage. It is not impolite or derogatory. It is not incorrect. It is meant as an extravagantly exaggerated account of a combination of things that happen to me (and others) on an all too regular basis in EQ2, things that I think are responsible for a big chunk of current customer dissatisfaction (the existence of which is all too clear if you pay attention).

Take it with some humor; I have never and will never flame anyone. I choose this very sceptical and cynical approach not only to amuse you but to stress a point, to make the case, and if you do not see the humor in it you are missing it because it is there for any observant person to see. I am not blind to the many magnificent features of EQ2 (or I would be a fool to keep on playing it) but this is about bugs. And they need attention, soon; mind you not the next-year soon but now.

Or I fear one of the next phrases that will catch your attention is ‘server consolidation’. I would like to help prevent that.

(Very short rundown of related problems after the main bit.)

 

The Rage

 

            Friends, Qeynosians & Freeportians, Norrathians...lend me your ear.

 

            On the off chance the Lucan dLere server would be up for a change, I logged into EQ2 today. I was in luck: even the Character Select Screen showed 4 of my 6 characters so I was allowed decent choice.

            Got in the game, and after the ever fun experience of shutting off Crafting & Trading chat in the main Tab (where it does not belong; this has been fixed so many times I must be hallucinating when I still see the text echo’d in various wrong places), re-labelling all packs then  putting all these packs in the places where they belong, rather then where EQ2 dumps them without the slightest regard for the ‘Window locked’ setting, I get out of town, somewhat sad after having established that my request to that cheeky Wholesaler for a new task (because the undeletable ‘Cardamon’ task takes about half a lifetime to complete) has merely set its quest counter from ‘4’ to ‘0’ (Nonono a different task? Nope, go away he just won’t have any).

Out of the city zones that is, where the disease that no-one seems to care to solve despite my spreading info on the subject after running into the relevant NPC in Nektulos Forest still roams, so I cure myself for the umpteenth time without any clue just where the fun factor is in this ‘world event’ the practical essence of which is restricted to making all players sick, time & again, for over a month now.

The zoning works; now that I have put the mininum required (not on the box, but it is true, with max textures) 2Gb RAM in my system I do not crash so very often, although the game can still crash my PC altogether (soft reset), dump me on the desktop (what, send another error report? y’right...), or ignore the zone change and throw me back to character select (2 of these 3 happened in the last hour). I climb on the new-and-improved Griffon (still slow as a snail but it has learned to bank curves; I gather that is an improvement of some kind ) to spend less time in the ridiculous travelling time-sink and get the fancy black screen of death that has also been fixed several times.

That means not even alt-tab, ctrl-alt-delete or any Win key will work so have to reboot machine. I make some tea.

Check for various lost chains on SATA disk and if the system holds, I log back into EQ2. Enough time has passed not to get that preposterous message that I have a character in the game world; in CoH they at least understood that once you are logging in, chances are your char is not in the game world and it might be smart to allow you to play the game you pay for, not keep you waiting for 5 hours like what happened in AC2. In EQ2 that is just a few minutes but that is still very unpleasant and highly illogical, in my not-so-humble opinion. I am but a humble poor monk; ok the ‘humble’ needs some work mebbe.

NOTE: Zone crashing happens a lot, also when for instance the game simply refuses to transfer you but, when finally allowing you to get back in, does tell you you just used your Call of Qeynos spell (which for reasons beyond my comprehension merely dumped me to char select, and in any case can not be used for another hour now). Seeing how you only use that when you want to go back to town chances are you must now take y’r Walkabout. It’s a long long way to...

Enough of that, on we go.

To my measured astonishment and high relief several things actually went well so I am back into the game where I proceed to...fix chat, re-label all packs, put packs in place.

The griffon works! I am on my way to the next zone, one of three I have to cross to get to where I would like to play (well I could take that boatride but it does not save much time and chances are I will get kicked overboard before I even have a chance to open the chests that drop of the baddies I kill).

I ask someone a question; she links an object to me. Very handy. But the link does not work; updates add content and bugs are apparently also content.

I run to my quest-related bad monsters, some smelly ol’ Gobbo’s outside  a building. I attack the pack; when I steer towards them the game confidently turns me around, making me run away from them. Nonono none of that now...I turn myself around again. Attack! I win that fight. Wait for power to come back up, dum-te-dum go read a book (War & Peace may suffice). Ok power back up (yes I use highest tier drinks & foodstuff ). I go inside the building. At some point I run from some critters there and when I hit the ‘break encounter’ the game auto-selects a chaser (because it hits me; I better not go into the fact that if I run through a pack of baddies and my reactive armor burns one, it is considered an attack on them and they are likely to chase me straight out of the zone) & turns me right back around, straight into the pack.

Velly velly handy. Almost as good as telling me that while being chased by half the countryside’s fauna (more often than not rather a feisty lot), it cannot free me from combat mode unless I target the appropriate bad guy. Real smart: when nearly dead & running (having had the luck of not being stunned or rooted, both of which make sprint disfunctional and the feature rather pointless) I have to stop turn around and, with the ever-so-perfected targetting system and its uncanny predilection to select 200-yard distant Fish batches much rather than nearby Nightbloods & such, pick one of the 20-odd monsters that would need about 1 second to finish me off.

Don’t fink so.

Back to the building. I run to the door and could swear I see a monster, it however disappears in the spot it was in so I tell myself I should perhaps eat fewer mushrooms from the fungi rings no-one bothers to harvest and walk in. I start to fight the baddies inside on top floor to speak to the NPC I need; he is standing in a corner. I say ‘baddies’ in plural because when I got up I saw around 5 but once I start the fight I see only 2; the others still hit me but are in ceilings or walls and such. One is right in front of me but has decided to turn invisible, an ability he does not have. I kill 2, now start moving around until the game stops screaming ‘No target’ (that ‘no target’ hits me all the time of course - did you ever notice monsters don’t have lag?) and allows me to see the buggers that are trying to hide in the building structure. I kill all but the invisible one but fortunately as some point the game decides to auto-target it for me and I actually (on a different floor by now) manage to kill it. It drops a chest. I click the chest. The chest is apparently sympathetic to its former master because it simply disappears from sight. Somewhat perturbed by this turn of events I go back upstairs, where of course the NPC has by now despawned.

I delete the quest, it reminds me too much of that City Writ I had to kill the Sharks for that fly 10 feet above the water (well still better than being chased halfway through the Steppes by an octopus -darn those tentacle boys are movers!) and make the screen state, in big fat blue letters ‘Too Far Away’ while constantly echo’ing, at the very same time, in the message tab ‘Your target is too close, move away!’.

Quite sublime...

What the heck, let’s go do Heritage Quest! Fun fun; I pick the Lightstone quest in the Commonlands (you can laugh here) hoping it will not force me to wait for 3 hours for one particular spawn (of the many spawns that are required for most Heritage quests, mind you these are the most fun quests in the game - oh btw & fyi I am now on one I hear takes three days to spawn - and they say this is for the ‘casual’player too? Tsssk...).

Anyway I am in luck: after one hour of waiting around doing zilch zip nothing watch CNN because the area is of 0 interest to me at that level, the bugger I need spawns, and no-one steals him from me because I was smart enough to momentarily forget I have a day-job and got on in the wee early hours.

I kill him in less than 1 minute.

Next spawn takes over one hour. CNN tells me the world is not a fun place. I think I knew that. Switch to BBC.

Next spawn takes over one hour. Da-die-da. Switch to Playboy channel.

Now I have to get access to a Zone to finish the quest. What is in the zone? Absoflutely nothing of interest but the Access quest for it takes me about two-and-a-half to three hours (hey I am 45 and cannot keep it up that long: switch to Discovery).

I finally get a completely useless manastone that is now sitting very pretty in a corner of my living room.

 

Where I have a short fun exchange with my Pet Dragon Pickwick the Pest, who then walks off and disappears into thin air, but I hope next time I log in he will be back in my apartment, where I have to move around various types of furniture and jump on them or crouch to even put a book in a bookcase (I will not bother to tell you about the Bookshelves That Hold No Books, that story dear children perhaps for another time).

Nor will I go into the details of this (as of today All Brand New) funny constantly blinking spell symbol that keeps telling me (right after I use the Fishbone Earring) that my water breathing is about to give out. Timely warning, I must say - spell only lasts 12 hours .

           

Addition

 

1)      Bugs bug me. The more the game is bugged, the more I am bugged. If I get sufficiently bugged, I feel that this bugger should move some place less buggy. Yes dearie that means I would bugger off .

2)      The populations are too low. There’s about 5 peeps in the zones (I’m 46 now) where I hunt. Can’t even make one full team with that and some are raid zones? Allow me and my guild to move to Antonia Bayle real fast or we are off.

3)      Out of my approximately 65 quests (counting active Heritage & Hallmark) I have at least 40 I care not to finish because after a few reasonable enough (often good fun too!) steps they now require one of the following: The Return To Evercamp (I refuse), The Forming Of A Raid (undoable) or The Galactic Quest For A Good Team (because after much stuff that I could actually do with a friend, or alone, now it is all Heroic stuff that we cannot hope to defeat). Change it fast or you leave me no choice but to leave.

 

The Conclusion

 

I say, I love the EQ2 game but I dare state it has room for

improvement.

 

The Cat

 

Lucas aka Kashta the Curious

 

P.S.

 

There is a lot of activity selling products (and forcing them down my throat makes me angry; if I click ‘no’ to content once, you have to be very unpleasant to force me to say ‘no’ time and again and not let me play until I do) and apparently zero interest in fixing the many existing problems. That must change. Fyi: the previous package (Bloodlines) has been bugged so long I have completely outgrown it and the spells I really wanted cannot be bought because the quests you have to have done cannot be finished. Not that is just too ridiculous to leave in the game for one day and it has been like this for over a month now!? And you want me to buy the new, more expensive Adventure Pack?

Zero chance.

Now fix it. You owe it to your players.

I know some workarounds exist in some areas; they should not be needed.

If you did it halfway right I would not have seen a player make the joke (in Crafting channel; I laughed very hard I gladly confess), when asked about (the use of) reporting bugs, “You get better at Bugreporting (233)”.

For me, that said it all. Stop forcefully selling things and making existing content even harder to complete, and fix what you made. Put some effort in it. You may like what happens next.

I am pretty sure you will not like what happens if you continue to disregard the lack of quality in your product. It is good in many respects and even excellent in some - but you should know better than I do that in today’s MMORPG market, you have to be solid across the board. You forget a few areas - you are history.

Please...do not end up like AC2, Horizons, or all the others that failed to listen.

I would, somewhere in the future, love to see an Everquest 3. But first I want to see a solid, fun-packed EQ2.

 

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