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I want an honest opinion about EQ2.....
LavendarX
Member Posts: 14
in Everquest II
Im about to leave World of Warcraft, and i was wondering what you guys thought of EQ2.
Is it anything like EQ other than storyline?
Id also like to know if the game is fun, or if something frustrates you about it what.
I am leaving World of Wacraft which in itself is not a bad game, but its community is full of childish jerks (thats saying it lightly). Then there is the problem that BLizzard seems to care not one bit about game balance as they are nerfing classes the dont need it while upgrading the most overpowered class.
Anyway let me know what you think with an honest opinion no sugar coating please.
Comments
Lavander, it really does come down to taste. Many people really enjoy the game while many do not. Personally I like the game for the following reasons: Lots of content, great commmunity, involving crafting system, look amazing on a decent PC, great group play. While these are my reasons they are still just my opinions. The things I like may be negatives to othe people.
Some complaints I've heard are that it's a game focused on grouping more than solo, the game doesn't run all that great on lower end PC's, people don't like zoning, etc. Again these are just opinions.
The best advice I can give you is try it yourself. You may find you really enjoy it but maybe not. I would say it's definitley worth a try.
Also SOE seems quite commited to making this game the best it can be.
Well i've played both games in question.. I'll say that WoW's quest system is much better in my opinion based on the fact you won't have spend countless hours killing the same thing over and over to get those 5 to 10 rare drops of items you need for a very low level quest. Anything in EQ2 is just as bad or worse than EQ1. Some quests are a bit more involving, but they are few and far between. Unlike WoW that had a good mix of the more involving quests and kill X number of creature types. But i just quit about a month ago and i know they were working on making it more like WoW in the fashion of not making it feel like such a grind. But only time will tell.
You can solo pretty good with just about any class up to about level 16 to 20. depending on class. After 20 though it's all a pure uphill grind, grouping is the only real way to feel as though you've gotten anywhere. Solo, there are way to many of the Super tough to Extremely tough mobs that are caterted to Groups, and the solo spawns that do pop are few and far between. So all the while you are searching for these few spawns you have to wade through a bunch of very hostile group type creatures that are so tough that you die fairly quickly to. But I only played a shaman and a monk, early on they nerfed the monk's dodging ability from one extreme to the other. So monk's end up taking a lot more hits than usual and you don't wear much but light armor. So it's a tough road as a monk. Unless you are in a group and fully buffed by a healer type, then you are actually able to do something.
As said, if you aren't grouped you won't feel as though you've accoplished much because you will end up dieing more often and the even con kills give you so little exp solo that it's laughable. Except when you have xp vitality, which they recently added. Much like the WoW rest bonus you get after camping in an Inn.
To much Pastel coloring, for such a good graphics engine they seemed to stay with the more cartoony pastel colors for most of their armors and many skin tones and such. You will see many elfs that look like they are some sort of plastic doll. rather than more realistic. Like very bright Yellow hair vise a more "blonde" look. ie. Betty Boop in color lol Even though they do have quite a number of hues and tints to choose from in the character creation. the more "natural" colors are not chosen often.
Those are just my cons, but for some pros...
EQ2 has one of the better crafting systems of the two i think, except you can't set the UI to make multiples like you can in WoW. But it does have a 'repeat' option in EQ2 that allows a slighty quicker/less of a grind feel. But not nearly as less of a grind than WoW. And i find resource gathering in WoW to be much less of a pain. But in EQ2 it is bareable after you get used to it. Kinda strange for this game to be "next generation" but you still loot pelts from animal kills but are able to also gather pelts in little "critter dens" that randomly spawn. Not like just skinning every animal you kill in WoW.
It has more classes to choose from as well as more races. Content level in EQ2 seemed to me to be less than that of WoW, but of course they are always adding more. As WoW is more PvP centric than PvE and they won't be adding much new PvE content as nearly as fast as EQ2 will.
Just keep in mind EQ2 has no real PvP system other than it's passive style which is a bit odd. But this could be either pro or con depending on what you want.
It seemed to me that EQ2 has a lot more variety in weapons and armor. besides the normal crafted items you have a lot of special looted items that has a unique look and feel to it. Albeit some of the crafted armor to me seems a bit sad looking.
Mounts in EQ2 are only a variety of Horses, rather than variety of different creatures than that of WoW. This could be looked at multiple ways also.
In EQ2 you are able to have a place of your own, the beginning free one is ok, but as you gain more wealth later on you can purchase a new place that is a bit bigger with a couple more rooms and such. which you gain many trophies throughout your adventures to decorate your home with, as well as many furniture that is player crafted or store bought. Unlike WoW which has no personal quarters and not that many trophies and such.
but of course there were a lot of slated changes to be made to the aspect of the grind to this game and has made some progress to that just before i quit. But it's to little to late for me, i had finally got fed up with the overall grind feel, not enough decent involving quests around. Some of the guild tasks are sad at best. ie. the gnome in the mage tower will tell you " we have information of a group of creatures planning some sort of attack, go take care of them at once" or somesuch and he gives you a task to go kill 20 badgers. It has me thinking.. ok.. yeah .. badgers.. intelligent enough to figure out a coordinated battle plan and attack the city. riiighhtt...
But other than that it's a pretty good game if you can stand the large amount of basic kill tasks versus very few involving worthwhile quests. And even most of the worthwhile quests has you yet again just killing more creatures. The creativity is of a very low quality in that fashion. Compaired to that of the quests in WoW. With only a handful of quests that are well written and well played out.
But to each is their own.. i'm sure people have experienced something different. But just how many collection quests do you really need? Quantity it has.. Quality it lacks.
I played EVE-Online from launch and after getting fed up with it decided to try to get into EQ2 and I cant remember when I had so much fun, the game is amazing.
I am well and truly hooked now, I just wish I had not been put off by the fantasy setting when I first had a look at it.
Its each to their own really and I've found that the only thing you can compaire between games is the fun factor.
I just recently quit WoW after having played it since beta. Now I'm playing EQ2 and so far I'm enjoying it quite a bit. I've played all the major MMORPGs over the years so I've gotten pretty good at judging early on whether a game will last me a long time or short time. Right from the start I knew WoW wouldn't hold me for terribly long. Although it was plenty of fun I knew that I would grow bored with it and want to move on. It was just a question of how long that took. So far with EQ2 I'm getting the feeling that I'll be with it for a longer period. I can't exactly say what gives me this feeling, but ironicly enough I think part of it has to do with the slower pace. In WoW it seemed like everything was rush rush rush. Quests had three sentences to describe them, they took a few minutes to do and before you knew it you gained a level and had to find a new place to hunt a few monsters to get the next level. Things seem more relaxed in EQ2 so far. I don't mind spending a little more time killing a few extra monsters for a quest that although has a simple structure (kill mob x till you get item y.. just like any MMORPG out there including WoW), it involved having a conversation with an NPC and made me feel like I was involved in some story.
That might be a key thing right there. I feel involved. In WoW it was such a spastic pace to get from quest to quest, level to level, to reach 60 as quick as you can to join your level 60 friends in some instance over and over. I felt more like the game was going on without me, and I was just along for the ride, holding on for dear life. In EQ2 I feel like I'm part of the game, part of the world. I feel the story around me, and I feel like I'm part of that story.
Sounds fair...
I really hate to leave WoW but there is so much about it that frustrates me (not to mention im bored to death of it). On top of all that the only thing that kept me going was my guild... but now its failing too becuase of all the uber leet guilds that i cannot compete with.
I played EQ so i expected it to be less about solo than grouping but most MMO's are like that so its ok. Besides grouping was a must alot in WoW (which wasnt why i got fed up with it).
I have played Ultima online, Asheron's call 1 and 2 and EQ1 (briefly)
Personally I like EQ2. I have been playing since the first week eq2 was released. Recently there has been alot of changes to eq2. Eq2 is more solo friendly now, plus tons of new quests, and even crafting people don't have to depend on other crafters in order to advance. When I play Eq2 I am not rushed at anything and mostly just enjoy the atmosphere and the chat. One of the things that I like best is; on my server at least, there seem to be alot fewer jerks than one would expect. The people that I have met in-game, tend to be older. I like that since I am older than the average gamer.
Someone up there mentioned gathering; well, that has also changed (whew) A person can advance gathering, trapping, fishing and all the other resource gathering alot faster than they could when the game launched.
My opinion would be to try it out and see if it is something that you like. If it isn't what you want in a game, there are plenty more to choose from. I believe there is a free download on the eq2 website to try it before you commit.
Good luck, hope you find the game you are looking for
Everything Works if you let it
It's my opinion that WOW and EQ2 aim at two different markets. On the one hand WOW is fast paced, you can solo and there is a heavy PVP aspect. However, it is also very shallow, especially in contrast to EQ2. EQ2 is the Rolls Royce to the WOW Corvette. I actually surprised myself with how much I enjoy EQ2. I just began the game for the very first time on April 9th. I had never played EQ1 either. One thing that immediately stood out was the spellcasting. In WOW, if I am a spell caster, I VERY quickly run out of mana. In EQ2, even if I am a priest and WITHOUT previously having drunk water prior to combat, I could go all day long. I play these games to interact with others and maybe meet new friends. The "forced grouping" of EQ2 is refreshing. I say forced, because many monsters cannot be done solo. The crafting is more involved than most games, and I assume that includes WOW as well. I have spent a few weeks with WOW, but I canceled my account after just a few hours with EQ2. I would, at a minimum, suggest pouring over the Trial of the Isle site, watch all the videos, read the Prima quick start guide, and then play the game for a few days, trying out the different classes. I think you'll be buying the game soon after.
Pro:
- Good graphics.
- Large world.
- Nice variety of pc races and classes.
- Decent crafting and housing systems.
Cons:
- Only runs smoothly on high-end pc's.
- Far too many "zones".
- Very static quests.
- Not exactly "solo-friendly".
AC (retired); EQ (retired); DAoC (retired); Horizons (retired); EQII (retired); CoH (retired); AC II (tested); Lineage II (beta); Neocron (tested); Saga of Ryzom (beta); SWG (retired)...
If you prefer graphics over content then EQ2 is for you!
Till Lvl 20 its pretty nice but after you pretty much need a group to do alot of stuff. They added more solo content but it's your basic same solo stuff you did at level 7 ect. You know what I mean
The sites to see are a definate PLUS but like I said..If you prefer content over graphics, UO is still number one in my eyes
Nobody is perfect...My name is Nobody
I am an honest person and speaking honestly.
EQ2 is a terrible game I have ever played before but that was my own opinion. Besides, it was couple months ago. Who knows if EQ2 would getting worse or getting better in these few weeks.
I do not like the partitions which means the server split up many area into different loggin, like Antonica have 1,2,3, 4 so people go in the map of Antonica are not in the same map. I like to see all people in the same map not to splitted into 1,2,3,4 server zone.
If SOE improve something like this then I may consider to play EQ2 again.
I like to see free for all area in EQ2 because it is much more fun to kill EQ2 players than WOW players.
If you want to know what EQ2 is like just download the :Trial of the Isle" that SOE is offering. Do everything there is to do on the island like quests, talking to people, group with others and trade skilling.
After you have done everything there is to do and would normally be ready to leave noob island just do it all over again twenty times in a row. When you get around the 15th time around on noob island you will begin to feel the effects of what EQ2 is all about. When you get to your 20th time around you will be asking yourself "why in the hell am I doing this?". Well congratulations.....you will then know what it is like to play the game in retail version and paying a monthly fee.
Yeah right. I have a distinct memory of killing hundreds of mobs in wow-newbiezone for multiple quests with 1/10 and lower droprate, often to the point where I wondered if it was the right mobs I was killing (just to get a drop confirming it was). And all of those drops required actuall inventoryspace for the questdrops, making it near impossible to work on mutliple quests at once. For those that dont know, quest drops in Eq2 do not take inventory space as a rule.
That was just one of the incredible lot of near truths and outright lies in this tread.
On the comment on instancing: Its disadvantage is loss of immersion and zoning. Its advatanges is way better controll on server load, server balancing and resource/mob competition between players. Sure it would be fun to play in Antonica with 4x the amount of players in the same zone as you huh? NOT! And since its now a wow vs eq2 thread (that we all love), I bet there is a few hundred thousand players that would trade the no-zone/lagged/queued/overcrowd reality with a instanced/nolag/nonqueued/stable/reasonable competiton environment
Someone said horses were the only mode of transportation. I guess that's about par for the course on this thread, considering all the other WoW people who for whatever reason once again were drawn to this thread to bash EQ2 without knowing very much about it.
You can get a flying carpet too. I noticed this in the first week of the game, if that gives you any indication how much time these people have actually spent in game.
EQ2 is a bit of a grind, but there are so many quests that you're going to find that you out-level about 1/3 of your quest list. I played a Templar to 25 and I now have a necro that is 31. I like the necro a lot more, and I've soloed him almost the entire way. Necros have some spell issues in the 20s that make it hard to get stuff done, but once I hit about 29 I started to become a very efficient soloer again.
I am having a good time in game. There are plenty of quests, and some of them are very well written. They do a pretty good job of varying the type of quest you get, and there are some quests with triggered events and NPCs that really make the game seem pretty cool.
Personally I thought leveling was too fast in WoW, and it took a lot of the difficulty out of the game. Besides that, with a relative lack of raid targets on the high end compared to EQ2, I was sort of left with a "what's the point?" feeling. That's just me though. PLenty of people will enjoy WoW for a long time, and someday I may even pay for it again. If EQ2 weren't so fun, I would have done it awhile ago.
I recommend you get a guild for EQ2. By level 20 I think it's good to have a guild of people who you can count on at least once in awhile to get quests done.
And no one's mentioned crafting. Crafting in EQ2 is a full time occupation if you want it to be. It's engaging and exciting, something no other game managed to do. It's essentially the next generation of SWG's crafting system (which was the only good part of that game imo).
After all is said and done though, I think only playing it is going to really let you know how you feel about it. Just like you had to play WoW this long to find out it didn't quite have everything you wanted.
Good luck man.
Habit is not to be flung out the window by any man, but coaxed down the stairs one step at a time. - Mark Twain
"We feel gold selling and websites that promote it damage games like Vanguard and will do everything possible to combat it."
Brad McQuaid
Chairman & CEO, Sigil Games Online, Inc.
Executive Producer, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
www.vanguardsoh
that depends opn who you ask. i know a LOT of people (including myself) who love the idea of interdependency between crafters. this builds community for one and it also prohibits one person from dominating the market.
also, if i were you trying to make a decision weather to buy the game or not, i would not trust people like Jorev who ONLY give bad things. people like him are just here to flame/bash, thats all. IMO (and you may disagree) i only trust people who can say what they like AND dont like about a game. i dont trust people who can give only one. i cant think of any game i love that doesnt have something i dont like, nor can i think of any game i hate there arent some things i like.
Schutzbar - Human Warrior - Windrunner Alliance - World of Warcraft
Nihilanth - Kerra Paladin - Blackburrow - EverQuest II
XBL Gamertag - Eagle15GT
I think you need to do your homework a bit better next time. Live update 3 or 4 (cannot remember exactly) did away with the interdependacy of crafters. Every crafter can now make all their own stuff they need for their own finished items. It may cost a bit more, but you'll get that back when selling to a NPC...
Better said, I think some more of the posters here needs to do their homework. Those guys are about a month or 2-3 behind. Which goes a long way to show just how honest their opinions are
Another point. I often see posts on the WoW boards regarding what spots are best grind at level xx. I have seen a few on the EQ2 boards, but they are rare. Fact is that it is quite possible in EQ2 to level around level 40 almost entirely by doing quests. That is 80% of the level range right now. This is the way I am leveling, and only once in a while do I "grind" the last 10-15% of a level if I realy want to get that ding the same evening. It may not be the quickest way, but is sure is a lot more fun! Grinding is defenitely not fun. And they are even adding more and more quests in the game, for higher and lower levels. And for those saying that the quests are just endless repetitions of killing the same mobs over and over again, I have one word: "homework"
The only thing I would like to point out is that although the Trial of the Isle may give you somewhat an idea of what EQ2 is about, it is IMO much to limited to get a decent feeling of the game. A lot of the interesting story lines, quests, zones and character development wont be seen until at least above level 10.
If you realy are interested I would recommend you buy the game (it realy isn't that expensive anymore) and at least try it out for a while. But give yourselve the chance to get into the game. And find yourselve a nice guild. That realy goes a long, long way in the charm of this game...
Thats odd, my girlfriend can sit and craft all day long and never needs another person, and she is level 30 thus far with most of her crafters. Maybe you outta stick to giving out bad WoW advice Jorev.
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
I think the funny part is someone ACTUALLY came to this forum looking for a honest opinon
Good luck finding it .
I haven't played WoW, but I have played AC1 and 2, DAoC, beta'd Horizons, and played EQ1 from beta2 until December, as well as a few other, less known mmo's, so I have some background in MMORPG's for my opinion
EQ2 can be fun, and sometimes, it can be a drag.
Yes, the quests are great and in most cases, well thought out, and yes, you can level to about 35 on quests alone. You could get to ~40 doing the higher heritage quests after 35.
However, as it was said, occasionally you do have to kill 100 mobs to get your quest item. Thats not too terribly exciting, that can be a drag.
The crafting system is great, I've never seen a better one. However, unless you do want to spend more money and more time making everything you need, from about level 10 on you need to get subcomponents off of other players. So long as you don't try to buy the item from the brokers, and instead make some friends along the way who do different tradeskills than you, you'll be fine. Tradeskills, however, take alot of time. They are no longer the 'drop xitem in slot x, drop y itemin slot y, drop z item in slot z, press combine' of EQ1 - now its click start and press this button to counter x effect to keep item in pristine/level 3 range. As you can imagine, this takes time - which is only a bad thing if you don't have alot of time to play.
Housing is great. The way they have it setup, no two houses will ever look alike inside, unless its intentional. Not only can you buy furniture, or get house items as rewards, or get pets for your home, but you can also customize what the walls, ceilings, floors, and in some cases accent items in your house look like. This costs anywhere from a few copper to a few gold to do - the bestter the wood quaity, the higher the cost, as it should be
There is only one real complaint going around about EQ2's housing, and that is that it is all instanced - if you, say, own that mansion in South Qeynos, yes its yours, but alot of other people could have the same address.
One thing others mentioned here was grinding. The only mmo game I've ever heard of NOT having grinding was WoW - and that was because everyone tells me leveling is so easy theres not time to grind. I have a friend who started playing WoW about 2 weeks ago - hes now level 50. If he had played EQ2 for the same amount of time, he'd probably be only level 20 or 25, possibly 30, depending on what he did. You arn't going to kill 10 mobs and ding in EQ2. You're going to kill more like 100 after level 15, and many more than that at higher levels, unless you do quests as well as killing mobs.
Another thing mentioned was zoning and zone instances. I have to say that I prefer zoning over what you had when Asheron's Call was newer - lag out the wazoo. And after EverQuest 1 - instanced zones make alot of us very very VERY happy. There is less competition for named spawnpoints, if I need to go out and harvest items for crafting, I actually have a CHANCE to, and there is far less lag when the max amount of people in Antonica is ~100. Instanced zones aren't really a big problem, besides - you can pick which instance you want to zone in, and groups/raids go into the same instance unless they specifically pick a new one. Immersiveness? Sorry, I'd rather be able to play, than have SoE decide the way they do zones isn't immersive enough and take that away. As is, the games stable, anyone who wants to play can login and play and not have to wait. WoW doesn't have the queue's because they have too many players, they have them because Blizzard needs to take a second look at how the servers are managed, and fix things so their playerbase can get on with the game.
That being said, I quite enjoy EverQuest 2. Its enough alike EverQuest 1 that I feel at home, but its so different that its definetly a new game with new rules and experiences. The graphics are good, and even on my low end machine, the game runs fine. Yes, the game is going to run badly on low end machines if you try to run with everything maxxed. It will run just fine if you tweak the settings to your liking or use teh prefab settings. They have pre-made setting profiles for a reason, use them. Even at the lower settings, though, the game looks amazing.
If you go to play, and have a machine similar to mine, I suggest the balanced setting. My specs:
1.8GHz AMD Athlon XP 2200, 512 RAM, 256MB GeForce 4 FX5200
I hope my opinion helps, and if you do decideto play, do join us on the real roleplay server - Lucan D'Lere - and look me up, I'll happily help you get accustomed to the game. My ingame name is Vixyn, or Sephire or Meiran if I'm not on her.
I would just like to say one thing to a point most ppl mention about EQ2; and that is that the game only runs good on a highend comp.
IMO this is totaly wrong. True if you want the FULL glory visualy of EQ2, but when it comes to you "need" the high system to play is false.
EQ2 has an amazing amount of options and you can tweak your heart out. IMO any gaming system (even lowend like WoW system req.) can get it to run.
I think that that point is what is putting players off from playing because they think they need a monster comp. Download the trail and see for yourself.
Na, most the players don't say that, just the SOE haters and the EQ II haters, its one of their bulletpoints.
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
Indeed it is Fad. If you talk to anyone who's played the game for awhile you're way less likely to hear the old "You need a $5,000 Alienware just to run It!!!". The game runs fantastic on my PC and i don't really have a monster rig. Like the other poster said, their are several options you can tweak to get it running right.
This arguement is simply a tried and true sign of an SOE hating troll.
One of the things about EQ2 that I didn't like is that it was too similar to the original EQ.
Second, nearly every quest that my (dark elf) character was receiving was sending him to the same dungeon. Not all of them, just nearly all of them. I need different sights and things to do or else I start bouncing off the walls; I can't camp the same location for long periods of time. Down with the Wailing Caves! .. or something.
Every damage dealing caster looked 99% like my character. Same robe, for sure, and many had the same weapon. Additionally, they not only looked the same but they cast the same spells.
Despite their effort to add some diversity to the game my character was casting the exact same two spells during any fight: Direct damage lightening bolt and area effect lightening bolt. Some times I could even use the purple orc only lightening bolt.
Approaching level 20 my character did receive some additional spells in the form of a couple of DoTs. One caused rocks to fall on the target (and I think that there was an AE version?) and one caused energy damage over time.
*ponders* Come to think of it, the energy DoT may have been gained early. At any rate, the point stands. You don't regularly cast DoTs, my character flung the same two bits repeatedly, and all other casters were using the same spells.
Weird Al said it best, "I think we're a clone now, there always seems to be one of me around..."
The pet was terrible. Having played the original EQ for so long I was expecting..... something. Not this bug. Not an error in code, but a insect. An insect that absolutely can not taunt and hardly done more than five points of damage.
All other pet classes had the same bug. I'm sure that now people have the cash to run around with spiders more frequently. Whatever; go team Pest!
Can't talk to people who play a character of the opposite alignment. Dark elves can not talk to wood elves for. This tight restriction is in despite the fact that there is no realm vs realm combat. It's absurd and holds no practical purpose.
Forced to do the newbie isle for every character that you make. ARGH!
Severely restricted number of characters. Or at least was when I played, I imagine they've gotten desperate and "litened to the players" and added more slots by now.
On the good side of things...
I enjoyed the Black Burrow music. The vocal counting was a bit silly but over all it was an enjoyable tune.
I had fun on the last day that I played the game. I actually managed to find a group outside of the caverns; woot! One of the members in the group was crazy and frequently made huge pulls. 'She' was nuts.
Gained experience for reaching areas new to your character. Spiffy.
Lots of things to do before you start getting to level 20. Little quests here and there that managed to go beyond the "kill X ammount of Y" nonsense that most MMOG "quests" generally are. Not that it completely avoided that.
Crafting was actually fun. This, too, generally causes me to bounce around the room out of boredom. It's the only game in which I enjoyed doing crafting.
Playing a rogue-type class was enjoyable. To me, far more so than my caster. The animations alone made you feel as though you were doing a lot more than you actually were. Also, there generally was (were?) not as many rogue-types around as casters and therefore I didn't feel like a clone.
Second, even though I later realized that I couldn't do an Assassin type in Qeynos, the play style of one was hella fun. Sneaking into the warehouse to assassinate that dark elf was just so darn cool and what they're supposed to do.
Now, why you get a mission in Qeynos to experience the assassin path when you can't play one in that location is an altogether differen matter.
--
It was mostly EQ, though. Go to dungeon. Go to dungeon again. Go to same dungeon even more.. and then do it a whole lot more yet. Kill same mobs over, and over, and over. Different quests would give you different reasons to do it, but it ultimately came down to repeatitive gameplay, camping, and clone central with a few light - rarely very cool - moments to break it up.
~Mysk, who probably rambles / types too much for his own good.
edit: Weird Al, even
Did you actually play the game more then to level 10? If so I have a very hard time beleiving you. You are flat out wrong in a ton of instances of your post and other times you are only half right. You make some decent points but either you completely misunderstand a huge chunk of the game or you didn't play it anywhere near as long as you said you would know half of what you said isn't true.
Firstly the scarab your referring too is only the starter pet, you shouldn't have had that past level 12, there are a TON of elemental pet options as well as more class specific pet options at level 20. You do actually have to go find your spells, the game doesn't provide them for you. And I know of no such pet bug that you mention, pet classes are fairly powerful in the game, and quite soloable.
Secondly, you can talk to anyone in the game, good or evil, I hunt with a person from freeport all the time and I am from qeynos, we suffer from no hinderances due to alignment, I am not sure where you got this information from but its wrong. You can even buy stuff from the Qeynos bazaar in Freeport, there is a black market brokers at the docks.
Did you play a caster in EQ 1? I ask because you compared it to EQ II, yet if you did play a caster in EQ 1 you would relize the significance of all the different spells and realize there are alot more then what your giving the game credit for. Once again, the game doesn't provide you with all your spells and pets, you have to go find them, HOWEVER it does provide you with most, and you should have well over 22, as a matter of fact you should be struggling for room for spellbars to use them all by level 20.
You only have to do 1 quest on the newbie isle and you can opt to leave before getting all your amor, so you do not have to play the isle everytime, why you wouldn't want to is beyond me, but you do not have too. And if you wanted to make your character a rogue you did have the choice to betray, which would make you a freeport resident. Don't you feel it makes sense to not have assasins on the good aligned city?
I have never had this happen, there are tons of differnt kinds of quests that send you all over the place. As a matter of fact, thats one of the things about EQ 2 questing that I love, it makes you go out and explore and stops you from getting in a rud in one place for too long.
And yes, at low levels most casters look the game, I am not sure why anyone would knock the fact that a game actually gives you starter gear now. How is that different from any other MMO right now, in most you start out "naked" which means you look exactly the same anyways as every other newbie. As you get higher level the clothing becomes more diverse.
If thats really what you got out of the game I would definatly say EQ II is not for you. You missed SO much of the game if you actually did indeed play the game like you claim you have. I hope you do find a game you enjoy, good gaming.
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World