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EverQuest II: E3 Update
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
MMORPG.com Writer Carolyn Koh took the time to drop by this year's E3. While there, she looked at a numnber of different games. Today, we present her report on a conversation with Scott Hartsman, the Producer of SOE's EverQuest II.
"Look! Ocean Spray!" Exclaimed Scott Hartsmann, Sr. Producer of SoE's EverQuest II. I watched the ocean rise and swell in the Timorous Deep, the Sarnak starting area, smash once again into the outlying rock, spraying water droplets across the screen and turned a skeptical eye on his shiny pate. "Yeah? And what did that do to your frame rate?" He laughed, "Absolutely nothing! We're just running on regular Dell XPS machines." He did allow that they made sure that the machines had 2 gig of RAM. Scott looked for and showed me the frame rate. "Look. We've got 52 FPS at this resolution." He waved a hand at the wide-screen, then took the last bite into his lunch and excused himself. I hopped onto his stool and opened up options. True enough. Max graphics and lighting resolution, at 1680 x 1060, with 80% rendering distance. No graphics lag.
"Oh look! She's checking on me!" Of course I am. "That's been our greatest hurdle to overcome," Scott allows, "The initial impressions," he started late with the EverQuest II project, only getting on board about a year before launch, and he was in Engineering. "By then many decisions were made and EverQuest II already had the reputation of being a dog to drive, and launch didn't make it any better." They have since been diligently working in the background to optimize the graphical requirements of the game, polishing all the details that made the game look slip-shod.
;)
Read the whole article here.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
Good preview, looking forward to it. After playing every mmorpg to date I'm still amazed at how polished and enjoyable EQ2 is.
Would love to feed that troll above me, but my maturity is way higher then his.
Anyway, I am looking forward to the upcoming new zones and increased levels. Timorous Deep certainly sounds interesting.
Although I haven't played EQ2 in a while (been enjoying LotRo), it is still my favorite mmorpg. The number of hours of enjoyment and satisfaction I got from playing goes way beyond any other mmo I've played. It just appeals to me. I am happy to be invited back by SOE to play again while.
I have just finished reinstalling eq2 again on my system. EQ2 was my very first mmo and I played it for years. Been trying a few games here and there but nothing is keeping me entertained.
So I'm waiting for servers to come up and log in my 61 ranger to see what is new in the world. Still looking for something to keep me entertained until AOC comes out.
While the new expansion looks pretty cool, its still not where I would like it to be, I played from first player beta through this past january. By the end of my time in the game it just felt like a total grind to me, it was like the fun got sucked out of it for me (and yes this was just me most likely). For me to return, they need to change some things they stated they didn't want to change, ie: adding colorization options to armor (because I looked like every other blue colored paladin wearing crafted gear), too much importance on raiding for high level gear (though I don't raid, I understand people that want to do it) and if you don't people don't want you to group with them so you're forced to grind solo, and there are not nearly enough character slots, i'm an alt-aholic and 7 slots isn't enough for a regular account, they need to make it at least 10 for regular and 14 for Access Pass accounts. When I first started I was grouping all the time, right through the first expansion, then I hit a wall and no one wanted to group because I didn't have the right gear (seriously, look up my characters, Neriana and Velitra on Guk server on the EQ II players site).... While its nice to see new areas revisited, I know that with my gear I wouldn't get any groups to get better. I mean seriously, who would you want tanking for you, someone that had all raid level gear from the hardest dungeons in the game with master level spells or someone that had crafted gear with a couple legendary pieces and at most some adept III spells? Thats the problem I have with the game.... I hope the expansion goes well though
(and please don't flame me, this is the way I see the game, you can feel free to disagree, just don't be rude about it)
Well, he has a point even though he delivers it in very rude way. Lack of "life" actually was a reason why I quit EQ2 after playing it for 1.5 years. Last 8 months I would say was more like sticking around because guild was great. I am long gone from EQ2 and will never return to it after the kind of impression what the world can be after what LOTRO has given me. EQ2 has the most empty and lifeless flora and fauna ever. I think while working on making things look "pretty" devs in EQ2 totally forgot about making them look alive. I think of EQ2 these days not more than a pixel and vortex shader test-grounds. I have level 70 ShadowKnight on AB, but I will never return there. I made quite a few movies while playing EQ2 and when I watch them over I can't hold sigh of disappointment about how actually poorly EQ2 is designed after the impressions I got from playing LOTRO. EQ2 is definately "old story". People only stick around because of the high level characters. I was strong enough, though, to makea decision and move on. And happy now playing LOTRO based on my favorite LORE - Tolkien Middle Earth.
Well, he has a point even though he delivers it in very rude way. Lack of "life" actually was a reason why I quit EQ2 after playing it for 1.5 years. Last 8 months I would say was more like sticking around because guild was great. I am long gone from EQ2 and will never return to it after the kind of impression what the world can be after what LOTRO has given me. EQ2 has the most empty and lifeless flora and fauna ever. I think while working on making things look "pretty" devs in EQ2 totally forgot about making them look alive. I think of EQ2 these days not more than a pixel and vortex shader test-grounds. I have level 70 ShadowKnight on AB, but I will never return there. I made quite a few movies while playing EQ2 and when I watch them over I can't hold sigh of disappointment about how actually poorly EQ2 is designed after the impressions I got from playing LOTRO. EQ2 is definately "old story". People only stick around because of the high level characters. I was strong enough, though, to makea decision and move on. And happy now playing LOTRO based on my favorite LORE - Tolkien Middle Earth.
Wow you like Lotro better then eq2 hmm sad day in your mmo history. Seriously if you left eq2 saying the last 8 months were just there because of u like the guild just imagine the last 8 months of ur time in lotro. Only thing that game has the the LOTR name otherwise its lifeless boring and just plain boring. I tried to give that game a chance it failed to hold me but also so did eq2 but i was able to play eq2 longer and that was at launch when everyone else seems to have hated eq2. i just quit because it seemed like it wanted to be eq1 with better graphics but couldnt live up to it. so i quit that after a few months.
There is probably not many games that can satisfy your interests. Until LOTRO I was playing all MMORPGs as just like another MMORPG. And EQ2 wasn't really an exception. EQ2 was great in the very beginning maybe first couple months. But it didn't have any immersive background story (at least for me personally). Nothing really was holding me there so I quit it like I quit any other game before EQ2. I can back 2 times, but then quit again because of the very same reasons - "empty, cold, lifeless pixel test-ground".
I personally need more than just a game itself to stick with it. I stick with LOTRO because of the LORE. You probably don't like Tolkien or don't care much about it, I, however, find it very interesting and fun. Thats the main reason why I am still in LOTRO and will be there for a long time to come. There are few other reasons that beat other games big time, but since you not playing LOTRO I won't waste my time explaining. Good luck to find the game that will make you happy.
EQ2 gets better with every expansion, but the less than populated world is too much to overcome. I will give this expansion a try, though. I did enjoy EoF for about a month before soloing wore me out. Hopefully they have some sort of way to keep it entertaining.
To me EQ2 is easily the best MMO at the moment. It was crap at launch though.
What I like is the depth of the world, lore and gameplay yet it is very easy to get into. And it is loads of fun to play, I thought Lotro would take over my MMO-life and it did, for three weeks then it was just plain boring (something I can't understand since it seems to have all the right ingredients).
I would urge those that tried EQ2 at launch and quit in disgust to try it again, I did and now I'm a true fanboy.
I really liked eq2, i thought the graphics were fine and the quests well crafted with some good lore, and the available char and classes were numerous. The main problem i found was the lack of population, especially for me as i am in australia. Also my other mates play wow and wont change cause of all there high toons. Pity really
tighersense
Yeah the problem with eq2 is that there are soo many zones. With that ammount of zones they should have 25K players per server shard to make it seem populated.
As it is now, even at peek hours, the game seems dead because all of the players are spread too thin.
I dunno, thanks to the xx-xx channels for inviting and the LFG system its not really that much of an issue. Although I am always running into people in every zone I visit. I have 7 alts at all levels between 20 and 70 and I always see about 10-15 people in each zone minimum... popular zones end up having 30+. For most zones you would probably prefer it if there werent other players around, cos they will take all the named mobs! Haha.
Not sure about all this solo business, soloing is just what I do while I wait for my group to get ready. Ive never had any issues finding groups, and its pretty easy to gear up to a respectable level if you do a few heroic dungeons. I agree that if you are a tank in handcrafted you will get looked down on though haha. Its probably the most obvious of all classes if you are under-equiped for a zone. Because you will take way too much damage and you wont hold aggro... but that holds true for most MMOs. People will rarely turn down a healer because they are wearing handcrafted armor.
Generally if you are a tank, you should at least be wearing mastercrafted for that tier, and upgrade as you find stuff. Can be somewhat difficult though if you arent an Armorer or have a bit of cash.
If you haven't played this game in the last year I would check it out again. The PVP server is filled with people. Hell, i haven't been on any server that didn't have people on it. The free expansion and EoF made this game more and more popular. I would check it out. It gets better and better after each expansion. .
What? Are you trying to play it with a Voodoo 3 Graphics card? I have a Geforce 8800 GTX and have the graphics cranked up at max and I can see my reflection off the shell of the beetles in Commonlands. Don't judge a games graphics if you can't set it past the low settings.
He's so proud of frame rate and all, so maybe he would make devs looks into disappearing shadows problem that is not fixed or not even acknowledged since at least 1.5 years.
Even though SOE refused to admit problem exists shadow disappear on very computer of Scott Hartsman during his E3 presentation
I posted this story in more details here:
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=371363
Above doesn't change the fact that EQ2 is my no. 1 MMO, and I agree it is getting better and better
Regards,
adolf
Never had that shadow problem.
Lucky you.
As even EQ2 Executive Producer himself can't play EQ2 without shadows disappearing.
Which is proven on video in post mentioned above
But then if you will actually follow the steps mentioned on SOE forums, record video of those and prove shadows really work for you, then maybe we would have more of ground based discussion.
PS
Thundering Steppes, River Basin is my good spot for that. Gather 10-15 enemies, cast some AOE and see if you still will have shadows.
Good luck
Regards,
adolf
The shadows disappear when you have render shadows from off-screen turned off. They disappear because your character can no longer see the source of the shadow such as a tower behind your camera. If the option is checked it will then render every shadow being cast by off screen geometry.Now if this isn't the case then i'm not sure what's going on lol.
Now if this isn't the case then i'm not sure what's going on lol.
Hehe I think I went trough all combinations.
You are partialy right Virgo. Indeed when you have shadows from off screen turned off, sometimes you don't see building or object shadows. But that's fine as that how this option is supposed to work.
The problem I'm talking about is that the shadows disappear completely. And no matter how your turn, or set up options you won't get them back before you will restart EQ2 (as just going to login screen doesn't help)
PS
Grr Monday again
Regards,
adolf