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Worth coming back and trying as f2p?
Gwahlur
Member UncommonPosts: 201
in Everquest II
I played EQ2 from release but stopped after about 3 years or so.
I'm considering checking it out again, since I haven't found dungeons and raids of the same quality anywhere else, and I love me a good dungeon crawl.
How are the f2p restrictions these days? Is it worth checking out as an f2p?
Comments
most the f2p restrictions have been removed
the existing restrictions are
- cannot research Grandmaster spells
- cannot move the AA slider (its stuck at 50/50 )
- cannot sell on broker (without paying a fee)
EQ2 fan sites
EQ2 represents everything wrong with MMO's. Solo all the way to max with button spamming combat. Every animation is exaggerated and clunky. Most players play soloquest 99% of the time. Invasive cash shop everywhere you look. It's just a prime example of why SoE is at the bottom of the barrel as far as MMO devs go.
Wherever this game is, run in the opposite direction.
EQ2 is always worth it.
Soon they will have 11th expansion out. For a new player it will take good one to two years to experince all the content game has to offer. It is really a huge game with many many fun things to do. It is a complete MMO experience and even as a sub worth every cent.
Hm, I know they had started making it more solo friendly when I left, but during my time there that's so far from how it was I have trouble believing you. Has it changed that much?
It's certainly a lot more solo centric. The majority of that is due to overhauling the leveling experience over the years. There's now fairly consistent quest-hub grinding from level 1 to the max level where that certainly wasn't always the case. Also, the game is 10 years old and doesn't have the constant influx of new players that WoW has, and a lot of low lvl players powerlevel their way through the majority of the leveling content.
Now having said that, SOE just released level agnostic dungeons that last from lvl 20-89. They're essentially dungeon queues that don't require a particular combination of roles. Low lvl players scale up to match the higher level players for the duration of the dungeon. They offer pretty good loot and great XP. Queues pop pretty fast now especially because it's new.
I think you could do a lot worse than EQ2 right now. It still feels pretty lively to be so old and is still getting plenty of attention from the developers.
"EQ2 represents everything wrong with MMO's. Solo all the way to max with button spamming combat. Every animation is exaggerated and clunky. Most players play soloquest 99% of the time. Invasive cash shop everywhere you look. It's just a prime example of why SoE is at the bottom of the barrel as far as MMO devs go.
Wherever this game is, run in the opposite direction."
I'm guessing you're one of those people that thinks Everquest should of stopped at Velious. Who needs the other 18 expansions SoE released anyway, they were all obviously terrible. EQ2 did drop the ball by having a plethora of dungeons and raid content though.They should of made it a good pvp sandbox with lots of gimmicks like archeage.
I hope you're being sarcastic?
Yes he is being sarcastic.
Let us be fair here. Game is a decade old with 11th expansion on it way. It is just silly and bad business to keep game heavy on grouping when a game is so top heavy. It is not a special case with EQ2. All old MMOS smooth out the leveling process for lower and mid leveling zones. Why put artifical road blocks in players progression by forcing them to look for groups for leveling? that is bad game design and bad business.
SOE is obviously doing something right or they won't be still churning out an expansion every year.
Yeah, I agree with that reasoning.
How are the newer dungeons though? Are they still epic like Solusek's Eye (if I'm correct and that is the one in Lavastorm), or are they 5 minute affairs like AA?
Are there new grindfriendly dungeons like Obelisk of something something or something where stuff respawns and you can keep grinding forever?
And how is the Mystic class these days? Can it do dps or is leveling it a chore? I enjoyed mine first time around, got it to 50 when that was the cap, but I don't really want to spend 3x the time on leveling...
Maybe I should transfer my 50 mystic and 60 swash, if it's possible to transfer from NA and NA pvp to eu
I was planning to play EQ2 about a month ago i'm pretty new to eq2,but had to walk away.the cash grabbing was too much for me.If you can play as a free player and ignore all that than i'd say your good. expansion price and cash shop just drove me away.
they have a pretty massive thread going on the forums with alot of vanilla eq2 players very upset over the rediculious collectors edition price increase. https://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/index.php?threads/awesome-bonus-items-for-purchasing-altar-of-malice.552468/
the cash shop is only cosmetic - beyond reducing the time needed to research new spells
if you plan to play the endgame of EQ2, it's better to sub
if for no other reason than to have control over your AA slider
i fully agree the Collectors edition of the expansion is a ripoff for price
but i see no reason to buy the Collectors edition
EQ2 fan sites
Actually yes I am.... Velious WAS the last good expansion and considering EQ2 tried to make Velious/Kunark based expansions even SoE agrees with me deep down. The other 18 expansions WERE terrible considering SoE has done nothing but bleed players shortly after Luclin.
They should have made it a true EQ2, not just using the name to sell an unrelated game, AKA Neverwinter/TESO/Pathfinder/etc.
Mercs are not needed but they enhance solo play and make it much easier to level up
http://eq2.wikia.com/wiki/Mercenaries
it's a one time cost of 15.00 to enable mercs on your acct (they were a feature from Age of Discovery)
https://www.everquest2.com/news/eqii-producers-letter-age-of-discovery
EQ2 fan sites
These seem like pretty harsh restrictions. Can you pay a fee to remove them for a character, or are Grandmaster spells and AA only available via monthly fee?
no one could research grandmasters until a month ago -- even subs, its a new feature
you wont care about it until you are level 100... its 3% difference in spell performance from master spells
any player can use ingame gold to pay for Krono (another way to pay for a sub)
like any mmo, gold doesn't come in large amounts until you are high level
there is no experience penalty
but you cannot choose how much proportionally is going to level exp and how much is going to aa
everyone needs 280 aa before you can level beyond level 90
half of your experience going to AA is not that bad
EQ2 fan sites
Thanks for clearing up the AA thing, Nadia. I'm OK with that restriction.
Regarding grandmasters. Does that mean you can never get grandmasters on your character, or can you acquire them another way. 3% is 3%, and eventually I will get to 100. Do you still get a few grandmasters for free as you level?
As I recall, when I last looked at EQ2 free to play, you could not use items above a certain quality. Does that restriction still exist?
Thanks for your help!
You have to buy the expansion to get to 100 so there is no way to get to max level without spending money. Honestly if you want to play endgame you should sub or farm for the plat to buy Krono's which isn't to hard if you are dedicated to it. I just don't think it's worth the aggravation of having to buy station cash items to equip every piece of gear that drops not to mention the spell upgrade limits. EQ2 at lower levels isn't really a issue F2P, I just think if you are going to play the end game seriously you probably want to.
It's end game is worth a sub in my opinion. The rest of the game is worth the F2P cost if thats your thing.
I'm not against paying money, I just don't want a subscription. When I buy something, I want to know it will be there tomorrow or neat year, whenever I want to play. I've dropped a TON of money on Marvel Heroes, because I know whatever I buy will be there as long as the servers are running.
So it sounds like I still have to pay to equip every piece of gear if it is above a certain quality, is that right?
Do you also have to pay to upgrade every spell to Master?
there are -zero- gear restrictions, the restricton was removed a year ago
item locking no longer exists
http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/09/27/soe-removing-everquest-iis-f2p-item-restrictions/
all spellbooks can be scribed (grandmaster spells do not exist as spellbooks)
grandmaster abilities have always been available to all players
you get a choice of them at level 14, 24, 34 etc
i logged in my 2nd acct that is free to play
i still have access to my grandmaster choices
EQ2 fan sites
Sweet. Most of my objections have been removed. Not sure how I feel about the Grandmaster one, but I might come back and try things out.
Current Games: WOW, EVE Online
I gave EQ2 a shot about 4 months ago as a first time player. I quit a month later after getting one character to max level.
Leveling is easy but it's mind numbingly boring as the only people in low/mid levels are alts powerleveling.
There are no large active guilds that I could find. I tried 3 different guilds and at most you would see 20 online during peak playing times, and most of those were just alts leveling up.
Also, almost all of the lower level content has been trivialized to such an extent to make it not a challenge at all, which makes it even more boring. I was soloing most of the low/mid level dungeons with a mercenary pet, usually pulling whole rooms if not more, including bosses.
And once I did get to level cap, I faced a long boring solo grind through their solo dungeons that drop gear for the harder end game stuff. So facing another month or more of solo grinding just to get to the point where I would even be able to actually play in a group, I called it quits. Just wasn't worth it.