Having played EQ2 and built a aystem to play it on at launch, then another rig 3 years later I have a bit to add here:
1) EQ2 is SINGLE CORE. Dual core won't help beyond offloading virus protection, system tasks, etc. and ONLY if you set your PC up that way.
2) After a few years of experience with the game and different systems here's what I think: The 'designed with future PC in mind" thing never really happened. The game is CPU bottlenecked even with the fastest core you can lay your hands on.
3) Lag in the game is not typically caused by your client. Yes you can load your client up by maxing everything out, but it appears that as you raise the graphics settings you cause more server traffic and the lag kicks in. Textures etc. are downloaded but it appears the models cause more stuff to be needed from the server if they are more detailed and when you get into large groups of players it gets terrible. It's absolutely standard to dial down you settings for raiding and it runs brilliantly (if somewhat ugly) when you do so even with as many as 48 people (2 raids taking turns on a mob) sitting around.
4) Biggest performance tip: Turn down the flora (it hides stuff you need to see anyway) and only render high quality for things up close. You will likely never notice the difference and the game runs fas faster if you do.
Comparing the graphics vs performance of any MMO with single player or multi-player games(Crysis, HL:2, etc.) doesn't work. MMO's have NEVER held up in that sort of comparison, and I don't imagine they ever will. There are too many other things going on behind the scenes in an MMO, taking up system and network resources, that other genres don't have to deal with. I think the question should be: is there another MMO with graphics like this that runs better on the same hardware? If so, let me know.
I also find it interesting that people say 30 frames per second is horrible and stuttering, given that movies are only 24 frames per second. i don't recall ever going to the theater and thinking,'Man... that movie was pretty cool, but seemed like it was lagging out a little...'
And since I'm on a rant anyway: when comparing two things, the word you're looking for is than, not then... as in "better than".
EQ2's performance is IMHO the only downside of the game. It runs very well on my machine but for the hardware should run better.
Some of that is SOE's code and the rest is my set up.
I can say of the different machines I've run EQ2 on since Beta not one of them has had a problem running the game and it's still looked amazing. It's just gone from amazing to stunning on my new machine.
[quote]Originally posted by Solase [b]One thing I can say I love about EQ2 are the spell affects. Launching nukes and seeing the whole screen shake like a meteorite hit nearby is awesome! I downloaded a raid video of Vanguard and from the video, the spell affects on Vanguard really sucked. Casters would launch spells at the mob and they all looked the same and was like a ball of goo moving directly to the target; no up or down, no speeding up or slowing down, just blah! I think the theory behind Vanguard is much more sound than EQ2, but EQ2 is much more spit and polished for graphics, but the graphic engine still suffers requiring unrealistic amount of resources compared to other games on the market. Again, hoping the devs at EQ2 update the engine in the next expansion to support DX10, but I'm not holding my breath. SOE management are money grubbing [email=b#%@#$]. And they really need to get a podcast host like Major Nelson at Xbox. Public relations is one of the reasons they fail horribly.[/b][/quote]
Funny, I actually couldn't stand the spell effects. Seriously
Comparing the graphics vs performance of any MMO with single player or multi-player games(Crysis, HL:2, etc.) doesn't work. MMO's have NEVER held up in that sort of comparison, and I don't imagine they ever will. There are too many other things going on behind the scenes in an MMO, taking up system and network resources, that other genres don't have to deal with. I think the question should be: is there another MMO with graphics like this that runs better on the same hardware? If so, let me know.
I also find it interesting that people say 30 frames per second is horrible and stuttering, given that movies are only 24 frames per second. i don't recall ever going to the theater and thinking,'Man... that movie was pretty cool, but seemed like it was lagging out a little...'
And since I'm on a rant anyway: when comparing two things, the word you're looking for is than, not then... as in "better than".
Tell me, why does it not work?!? What is such a difference in regards to display of a game? A good MMO with great graphics is Guild Wars. Another cool thing Guild Wars does better than other MMO's is patching on the fly and less downtime. Why can't SOE and Blizzard do this?!? (**crickets chirping in the background**)
Though I'm not a programmer, from having a basic knowledge of programming and seeing what the server is responsible for doing has little impact on what the client is capable of rendering on your screen. Many FPS games have dozens of people in the same vacinity; all of them jumping firing, running, etc... yet they are more crutical on fps than MMO's and they are able to pull it off, why can't SOE?!?
Saying that you can't compare the 2 is ludricous! That's like saying I can't compare a humm-v with a Lexus. Sure, they maybe 2 totally different class of cars, but they are still cars and have things in common to compare when you're deciding whether to buy one or the other (i.e. comfort, mpg, performance, capabilities, etc...). So please, tell us from a programming perspective, "Why we can't compare the graphics quality of a FPS with a MMO". (**crickets chirping in the background**)
Comparing the graphics vs performance of any MMO with single player or multi-player games(Crysis, HL:2, etc.) doesn't work. MMO's have NEVER held up in that sort of comparison, and I don't imagine they ever will. There are too many other things going on behind the scenes in an MMO, taking up system and network resources, that other genres don't have to deal with. I think the question should be: is there another MMO with graphics like this that runs better on the same hardware? If so, let me know.
I also find it interesting that people say 30 frames per second is horrible and stuttering, given that movies are only 24 frames per second. i don't recall ever going to the theater and thinking,'Man... that movie was pretty cool, but seemed like it was lagging out a little...'
And since I'm on a rant anyway: when comparing two things, the word you're looking for is than, not then... as in "better than".
Tell me, why does it not work?!? What is such a difference in regards to display of a game? A good MMO with great graphics is Guild Wars. Another cool thing Guild Wars does better than other MMO's is patching on the fly and less downtime. Why can't SOE and Blizzard do this?!? (**crickets chirping in the background**)
Though I'm not a programmer, from having a basic knowledge of programming and seeing what the server is responsible for doing has little impact on what the client is capable of rendering on your screen. Many FPS games have dozens of people in the same vacinity; all of them jumping firing, running, etc... yet they are more crutical on fps than MMO's and they are able to pull it off, why can't SOE?!?
Saying that you can't compare the 2 is ludricous! That's like saying I can't compare a humm-v with a Lexus. Sure, they maybe 2 totally different class of cars, but they are still cars and have things in common to compare when you're deciding whether to buy one or the other (i.e. comfort, mpg, performance, capabilities, etc...). So please, tell us from a programming perspective, "Why we can't compare the graphics quality of a FPS with a MMO". (**crickets chirping in the background**)
Dude there is more to running a game than just saying i bought a decent system,therefore it should run.
When i played this game for 18mnths and loved every minute of it[well cept for 100 crafting bots]i had a very weak PC.As a mater of fact i played it on 3 pc's ago.If i am not mistaken that PC was a TI something nvidia card and a p3 or 4 something.Deffinately nothing near spectacular by nowadays standards.Actually that old machine is prolly worth 50 bucks on the open market.
Don't go mistaking guild wars graphics for being good ,because most people don't understand what good graphics even look like.That is not meant to be a flame ,it's just a fact.To some people what looks good enough is good enough,but not knowing what went into the graphics,is a different story.
You could easily turn down some stuff in EQ2 and get a great playing system and still be better graphically wise than other games.Like i said i ran it quite well on a crap system so anyone should be able to run it no probs.
A lot of people don't see the whole picture in a graphic scene.There is more than just the number of players.Every object in/out of view counts towards the over all polycount/bandwidth and every system is limited by how much it can handle.Dynamic lighting is huge/shaders/shiny surfaces/decals so much to create a great looking scene.The sound files/animations.There is little tricks like copying a tree over and over instead of redrawing it can greatly lessen the tax on the graphics.Hi res textures,that make things in the world look realistic.Some games take detail serious and have several parts to a mesh rather than one large part with one texture on it.Easy way to explain that is look sometimes at a players body/belt?does it look like the belt is seperate?or does it look like one texture pasted onto the whole players body?
This is why unrealtournament is one of the games that are cutting edge.There detail in weapons/meshes the world is unprecedented.MMO's usually take much longer to make because they have more content than a FPS,so this is prolly why there engines will always be a little outdated.Personally i would sacrifice cutting edge for tons of game content.
I already made a long post and there is TONS more that go into graphics.Someone else can prolly make a shorter post explaining it lol.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Originally posted by Wizardry This is why unrealtournament is one of the games that are cutting edge.There detail in weapons/meshes the world is unprecedented.MMO's usually take much longer to make because they have more content than a FPS,so this is prolly why there engines will always be a little outdated.
Vanguard is one of few MMOs (maybe only mmo) developed using a modified Unreal 2 engine
Sorry, just see a lot of flapping in the wind... Still fail to see your point regarding graphics and I hate to say it, it really sounds like a lot of die hard fans like myself who love MMORPGs are so blinded by the fact that we even have a good quality game that they defend the game manufacturers from bringing things into perspective. Vanguard (sad story) was actually built on the Unreal engine. At least the feedback I heard on it was understandable. I can see why the Unreal engine was not made to produce images from such a long distance away as big as Vanguard is. However, WoW does a great job of juggling game content yet having very little zoning (Now why do we have to zone so much in EQ2? I thought it was made for the future!). If you could take the graphics quality of EQ2, slap it on the WoW engine, then produce EQ3, I'd be happy.
Anyhow, as much as I bash EQ2 about it's graphics engine sucking, I love the game play and I've been playing it longer than WoW. As I've stated before, I don't think we need to sugar coat issues about their graphic engine. It IS a known issue and even EQ2Daily podcast mentioned it to great detail! I'm so glad they did as it being one of the major reasons EQ2 has failed to achieve more than it has. Shadows of Luclin was a turning point for EQ1. Though I was skeptical when it first came out, I can look back and say, "hey, if they didn't overhaul the graphics, EQ1 would have died by now". EQ2 is on it's last leg. If SOE doesn't do something about their graphics engine soon, I fear the game I love will find it's demise in the next 2 years. So please forgive me if you feel I'm bashing EQ2. In respect, I know and have seen other quality games do more graphically in multiplayer and my hope is that the EQ2 devs are given the go ahead to make it a competitive product with WoW. From the devs point of view, I really feel they want this! Nothing worse than putting in long hours of hard earned work only to see it flop next to an inferior product because the end users system is unable to produce the true aspect of what they envisioned in their studio.
I'm really getting frustrated with eq2's graphics engine. With the last patch I can't even seem to get into the game!! I've updated my drivers and yesterday I reinstalled the entire game. It is intermittant sometimes it works but most of the time it either shows the desktop while playing the startup music and showing a mouse icon, or the screen is black and it plays music.
I'm really frustrated with the issues I'm having with this game. I like the game play and quests and find it entertaining and fun but the technical issues are starting to piss me off. Does anyone else have these kinds of problems? I'm considering going out and buying vista and completely reinstalling my os....
Other games seem to work fine. I can play hellgate london, Vanguard, even swg without problems. Anyone have any advice before I deltree my entire eq2 directory...
fyi I found the source of the problem. It looks like it has something to do with xfire. When xfire is running EQ2 won't start when I kill xfire it works fine.
I'm sorry but I agree with the OP. I'm what you would call a PC Enthusiast. I do everything with PC's thats possible to do, building, repairing, installing Mac OS's, Linux Distros, things like that. I'm also a hardcore gamer and have been for 10 years.
I just built this PC to play everything on the market and future games as well.
Intel Quad Core Q6600 Overclocked @ 3.4 Ghz
2GB DDR2 Ram
nVidia 8800GT 512MB Overclocked as well
Windows XP Pro SP2
Thats really the only important hardware you should know about to make judgment. Everything I throw at this it runs like a champ, I can even run Crysis with Very High Settings (forced, DX10 mode in XP, yes its possible look it up) at 20+ FPS in most areas. In Team Fortress 2 I get 200+ FPS most of the time. Call of Duty 4 is always 100+.
I know how to tune a computer and I know theres no issues with it. I score 15,200+ on 3DMark06 which puts my computer in the top 2% that have been tested.
Sounds good and everything right? Kinda sounds like I'm bragging? Well.. I'm not, and this game just has horrible coding. I'm barely getting better performance than my AMD Athlon 3800 X2, 7800GT setup.
Here's some screenies.
WARNING, These are pretty big, I run at 1680x1050 widescreen resolution so unless your resolution is that size or bigger its gonna be pretty large.
in CPUZ look down at Core Speed, 3400 MHZ = 3.4 ghz,
another dip in FPS, it wasn't this low the entire time but theres NO reason that it should dip that low with my computer, an extra gig of ram wouldn't make a significant difference.
My average FPS was about 30-35.
Say all you want, this is real world performance I'm receiving and theres no excuse, I got better FPS on my old PC in Vanguard and it looks way better if you ask me.
I don't currently play any MMO's so it's not like i'm being a fanboy putting down EQ2. I just install it every now and then and see how its doing, end up not being able to keep interest and uninstalling until I do the same. I was severely disappointed with this performance.
Maybe it would be better if I wasn't running at Extreme Settings, but I WANT to run at extreme settings, this game should be able to run at extreme settings and look amazing and run amazing.
I wasn't even in a big city or populated area either.
fyi I found the source of the problem. It looks like it has something to do with xfire. When xfire is running EQ2 won't start when I kill xfire it works fine.
Thats because xfire hooks into Directx 9, its probably a directx error. I had problems with Xfire and CoD4 when I tried to chagne resolutions and had Xfire up.
fyi I found the source of the problem. It looks like it has something to do with xfire. When xfire is running EQ2 won't start when I kill xfire it works fine.
Thats because xfire hooks into Directx 9, its probably a directx error. I had problems with Xfire and CoD4 when I tried to chagne resolutions and had Xfire up.
I think it might have been due to an xfire update not happening properly. There was an update awhile back that my firewall software blocked some part of. After the update things worked so I didn't think anything of it but now in hindsight I'm thinking that combined with the eq2 update might have combined to create some sort of problem.
I'm going to try uninstalling and reinstalling xfire after I'm happy that the problem is truely gone. Maybe in a week or so.
EQ2's "crappy game engine" was designed with future pc's in mind. Very few current pc's will run the game at max settings. No one I know runs with everything maxed out. You simply cannot do it with the current technology. Most people happily run the game somewhere in the middle. The graphics still shine beautifully. Considering the age of the game, and the constant tweaks SoE have implemented over the course of the last 3 years, I think it holds up pretty well compared to a lot of other MMOs out there. If you want to see a truly bad engine that struggles on the latest technology, try Vanguard! Though even that I've been told has improved dramatically over the last 6 months.
I understand they make mmos to last a few years so as you progress you game kepps looking better and better. The problem I have for this is most folks after 2 years quit the game from boredom and move on to the newer. Why make a game that runs crappy at launch and expect it to get better after 2+years? Most players will judge a game within the 1st 20plus levels or less they should make a game current to its release date imo make the game run well so it gets a good start.
Originally posted by JasPlun Why make a game that runs crappy at launch and expect it to get better after 2+years?
probably because games like Everquest are still ongoing * 8 * years later
I think any MMO with 100k+ subs is fine
and theres plenty of them.... Ultima Online, Everquest, City of Heroes, DAOC
In fairness though UO and EQ cant be attracting many new players nowadays but its a testiment to how good they where back in the day that they've kept these sort of numbers of the years
It makes you wonder if the current crop of new MMOs will still be going this strong in a few years time.
I'm sorry but I agree with the OP. I'm what you would call a PC Enthusiast. I do everything with PC's thats possible to do, building, repairing, installing Mac OS's, Linux Distros, things like that. I'm also a hardcore gamer and have been for 10 years. I just built this PC to play everything on the market and future games as well. Intel Quad Core Q6600 Overclocked @ 3.4 Ghz
2GB DDR2 Ram
nVidia 8800GT 512MB Overclocked as well
Windows XP Pro SP2 Thats really the only important hardware you should know about to make judgment. Everything I throw at this it runs like a champ, I can even run Crysis with Very High Settings (forced, DX10 mode in XP, yes its possible look it up) at 20+ FPS in most areas. In Team Fortress 2 I get 200+ FPS most of the time. Call of Duty 4 is always 100+. I know how to tune a computer and I know theres no issues with it. I score 15,200+ on 3DMark06 which puts my computer in the top 2% that have been tested. Sounds good and everything right? Kinda sounds like I'm bragging? Well.. I'm not, and this game just has horrible coding. I'm barely getting better performance than my AMD Athlon 3800 X2, 7800GT setup. Here's some screenies. WARNING, These are pretty big, I run at 1680x1050 widescreen resolution so unless your resolution is that size or bigger its gonna be pretty large. http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/7126/11fpswtfxg6.jpg My FPS Dipped atleast that low and would stay under that for at least a minute or so depending on where I was. And just to prove what kind of computer I have I stuck it in windows mode and brought up some programs to show I'm tellin the truth. http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/7813/20fpswtfld1.jpg in CPUZ look down at Core Speed, 3400 MHZ = 3.4 ghz, another dip in FPS, it wasn't this low the entire time but theres NO reason that it should dip that low with my computer, an extra gig of ram wouldn't make a significant difference. My average FPS was about 30-35. Say all you want, this is real world performance I'm receiving and theres no excuse, I got better FPS on my old PC in Vanguard and it looks way better if you ask me. I don't currently play any MMO's so it's not like i'm being a fanboy putting down EQ2. I just install it every now and then and see how its doing, end up not being able to keep interest and uninstalling until I do the same. I was severely disappointed with this performance. Maybe it would be better if I wasn't running at Extreme Settings, but I WANT to run at extreme settings, this game should be able to run at extreme settings and look amazing and run amazing. I wasn't even in a big city or populated area either.
I had similar issues and what I found was that it was a memory problem. Like you I had 2gb and thought it should be easy. But if you look at taskmanager I'll bet you will find that eq2 on extreme is eating up 1.6+ gb or ram which unless you run a really lean computer means you will hit 2gb and start swaping.
I upgraded to 4gb and now I don't have any swaping issues however I still can't play on extreme for some reason I'm now getting dxrenderer errors periodically on very high and extreme settings.
Honestly the issue is that the eq2 engine is just plain poor. Like you said VG runs a lot better on my couputer....
A month ago i was using a dated pc with the agp system but it was a pentium 4 3.2ghz 1950 pro and it was fast memory etc but eq2 ran totally crap on it had to play on lowest settings.
It was obvious to me after researching that i needed a new rig to do good gaming, allthough on other games my old system ran them fine. so i spent a good $800 on upgrading my pc to play through on high settings,
The system i bought was e6750 core 2 duo 266ghz(overclocked to 3.2) gigabyte x38 4gig ram 500 watt power supply antec 8800 gt(standard clocked) samsung pebble (no matter on the subject)
Overall I was amazed with the difference in all latest games a massive improvement, sadly my eq2 subscription ran out so i tried a trial version "play the fae" in XP since aall games supposedly play better in xp I was hugely unimpressed firstly it was like it was doing internet lag and then freezing lke it was my cpu lagging then some places it was jerking like my graphic card wasnt good enough. I tried max settings for 1 hour then high settings with shadows without shadows(no improvements) run smooth on high perfomance(still an upgrade)
I have a 3mb line so i've put it down to my computer not running it good, I love eq2 the game its the best mmorpg out there for me without doubt, but I bought vanguard, i got it for cheaper and wanted to try a new game out.
First I was skeptical, thought if i couldnt play eq2 forget vanguard but I loaded it into XP and it ran flawlessly on max settings average 40fps mostly in cities 20-25 now the looks off it is wierd somethings look great somethings look crap it's mixed with beauty and ugliness to be honest, like some of the tree's and just the detail of the characters in vanguard look really uninspriring, but on the other hand the environment and detail of other things like the walls make it probably the best looking mmorpg out there.
The conclusion is EQ2 shouldn't be harder to run then vanguard but it's proving the case for me on XP32, I also have vista 64 and the scenario was reversed I tried the trial of eq2 two days ago on vista for an hour or so on high settings and it ran nicely, which gives me some hope, as for me i would much prefer EQ2 gameplay then vanguard.
Yeah alas the game play in eq2 is much better then VG... If VG had decent quests and a high lvl game I'm be there. But for me I've kinda leveled up enough that I've burned through most of the good stuff and Just haven't been able to get back into it since I left for eq2. Eq2 I'm enjoying quite a bit. I love the quests and all the things to do.
VG will probably get there in time and I'm pretty sure I'll go back to it in 5-6 months and by then I'll have maxed out eq2 and be looking for something new. Perhaps I'll do AoC it just depends on how pvp it is oriented and how the combat system works. I'm pretty sceptical about new games now days since they always seem lacking in content and sometimes come full of bugs.
Comments
Having played EQ2 and built a aystem to play it on at launch, then another rig 3 years later I have a bit to add here:
1) EQ2 is SINGLE CORE. Dual core won't help beyond offloading virus protection, system tasks, etc. and ONLY if you set your PC up that way.
2) After a few years of experience with the game and different systems here's what I think: The 'designed with future PC in mind" thing never really happened. The game is CPU bottlenecked even with the fastest core you can lay your hands on.
3) Lag in the game is not typically caused by your client. Yes you can load your client up by maxing everything out, but it appears that as you raise the graphics settings you cause more server traffic and the lag kicks in. Textures etc. are downloaded but it appears the models cause more stuff to be needed from the server if they are more detailed and when you get into large groups of players it gets terrible. It's absolutely standard to dial down you settings for raiding and it runs brilliantly (if somewhat ugly) when you do so even with as many as 48 people (2 raids taking turns on a mob) sitting around.
4) Biggest performance tip: Turn down the flora (it hides stuff you need to see anyway) and only render high quality for things up close. You will likely never notice the difference and the game runs fas faster if you do.
Comparing the graphics vs performance of any MMO with single player or multi-player games(Crysis, HL:2, etc.) doesn't work. MMO's have NEVER held up in that sort of comparison, and I don't imagine they ever will. There are too many other things going on behind the scenes in an MMO, taking up system and network resources, that other genres don't have to deal with. I think the question should be: is there another MMO with graphics like this that runs better on the same hardware? If so, let me know.
I also find it interesting that people say 30 frames per second is horrible and stuttering, given that movies are only 24 frames per second. i don't recall ever going to the theater and thinking,'Man... that movie was pretty cool, but seemed like it was lagging out a little...'
And since I'm on a rant anyway: when comparing two things, the word you're looking for is than, not then... as in "better than".
EQ2's performance is IMHO the only downside of the game. It runs very well on my machine but for the hardware should run better.
Some of that is SOE's code and the rest is my set up.
I can say of the different machines I've run EQ2 on since Beta not one of them has had a problem running the game and it's still looked amazing. It's just gone from amazing to stunning on my new machine.
[quote]Originally posted by Solase
[b]One thing I can say I love about EQ2 are the spell affects. Launching nukes and seeing the whole screen shake like a meteorite hit nearby is awesome! I downloaded a raid video of Vanguard and from the video, the spell affects on Vanguard really sucked. Casters would launch spells at the mob and they all looked the same and was like a ball of goo moving directly to the target; no up or down, no speeding up or slowing down, just blah! I think the theory behind Vanguard is much more sound than EQ2, but EQ2 is much more spit and polished for graphics, but the graphic engine still suffers requiring unrealistic amount of resources compared to other games on the market. Again, hoping the devs at EQ2 update the engine in the next expansion to support DX10, but I'm not holding my breath. SOE management are money grubbing [email=b#%@#$]. And they really need to get a podcast host like Major Nelson at Xbox. Public relations is one of the reasons they fail horribly.[/b][/quote]
Funny, I actually couldn't stand the spell effects. Seriously
D.
Though I'm not a programmer, from having a basic knowledge of programming and seeing what the server is responsible for doing has little impact on what the client is capable of rendering on your screen. Many FPS games have dozens of people in the same vacinity; all of them jumping firing, running, etc... yet they are more crutical on fps than MMO's and they are able to pull it off, why can't SOE?!?
Saying that you can't compare the 2 is ludricous! That's like saying I can't compare a humm-v with a Lexus. Sure, they maybe 2 totally different class of cars, but they are still cars and have things in common to compare when you're deciding whether to buy one or the other (i.e. comfort, mpg, performance, capabilities, etc...). So please, tell us from a programming perspective, "Why we can't compare the graphics quality of a FPS with a MMO". (**crickets chirping in the background**)
Though I'm not a programmer, from having a basic knowledge of programming and seeing what the server is responsible for doing has little impact on what the client is capable of rendering on your screen. Many FPS games have dozens of people in the same vacinity; all of them jumping firing, running, etc... yet they are more crutical on fps than MMO's and they are able to pull it off, why can't SOE?!?
Saying that you can't compare the 2 is ludricous! That's like saying I can't compare a humm-v with a Lexus. Sure, they maybe 2 totally different class of cars, but they are still cars and have things in common to compare when you're deciding whether to buy one or the other (i.e. comfort, mpg, performance, capabilities, etc...). So please, tell us from a programming perspective, "Why we can't compare the graphics quality of a FPS with a MMO". (**crickets chirping in the background**)
Dude there is more to running a game than just saying i bought a decent system,therefore it should run.When i played this game for 18mnths and loved every minute of it[well cept for 100 crafting bots]i had a very weak PC.As a mater of fact i played it on 3 pc's ago.If i am not mistaken that PC was a TI something nvidia card and a p3 or 4 something.Deffinately nothing near spectacular by nowadays standards.Actually that old machine is prolly worth 50 bucks on the open market.
Don't go mistaking guild wars graphics for being good ,because most people don't understand what good graphics even look like.That is not meant to be a flame ,it's just a fact.To some people what looks good enough is good enough,but not knowing what went into the graphics,is a different story.
You could easily turn down some stuff in EQ2 and get a great playing system and still be better graphically wise than other games.Like i said i ran it quite well on a crap system so anyone should be able to run it no probs.
A lot of people don't see the whole picture in a graphic scene.There is more than just the number of players.Every object in/out of view counts towards the over all polycount/bandwidth and every system is limited by how much it can handle.Dynamic lighting is huge/shaders/shiny surfaces/decals so much to create a great looking scene.The sound files/animations.There is little tricks like copying a tree over and over instead of redrawing it can greatly lessen the tax on the graphics.Hi res textures,that make things in the world look realistic.Some games take detail serious and have several parts to a mesh rather than one large part with one texture on it.Easy way to explain that is look sometimes at a players body/belt?does it look like the belt is seperate?or does it look like one texture pasted onto the whole players body?
This is why unrealtournament is one of the games that are cutting edge.There detail in weapons/meshes the world is unprecedented.MMO's usually take much longer to make because they have more content than a FPS,so this is prolly why there engines will always be a little outdated.Personally i would sacrifice cutting edge for tons of game content.
I already made a long post and there is TONS more that go into graphics.Someone else can prolly make a shorter post explaining it lol.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreal_engine
by the time game was released, 3 years later,
Unreal 4 engine was already in development
I'm not a tech person but I know theres a big difference between MMO graphic engine needs and FPS gaming
EQ2 fan sites
Sorry, just see a lot of flapping in the wind... Still fail to see your point regarding graphics and I hate to say it, it really sounds like a lot of die hard fans like myself who love MMORPGs are so blinded by the fact that we even have a good quality game that they defend the game manufacturers from bringing things into perspective. Vanguard (sad story) was actually built on the Unreal engine. At least the feedback I heard on it was understandable. I can see why the Unreal engine was not made to produce images from such a long distance away as big as Vanguard is. However, WoW does a great job of juggling game content yet having very little zoning (Now why do we have to zone so much in EQ2? I thought it was made for the future!). If you could take the graphics quality of EQ2, slap it on the WoW engine, then produce EQ3, I'd be happy.
Anyhow, as much as I bash EQ2 about it's graphics engine sucking, I love the game play and I've been playing it longer than WoW. As I've stated before, I don't think we need to sugar coat issues about their graphic engine. It IS a known issue and even EQ2Daily podcast mentioned it to great detail! I'm so glad they did as it being one of the major reasons EQ2 has failed to achieve more than it has. Shadows of Luclin was a turning point for EQ1. Though I was skeptical when it first came out, I can look back and say, "hey, if they didn't overhaul the graphics, EQ1 would have died by now". EQ2 is on it's last leg. If SOE doesn't do something about their graphics engine soon, I fear the game I love will find it's demise in the next 2 years. So please forgive me if you feel I'm bashing EQ2. In respect, I know and have seen other quality games do more graphically in multiplayer and my hope is that the EQ2 devs are given the go ahead to make it a competitive product with WoW. From the devs point of view, I really feel they want this! Nothing worse than putting in long hours of hard earned work only to see it flop next to an inferior product because the end users system is unable to produce the true aspect of what they envisioned in their studio.
I'm really getting frustrated with eq2's graphics engine. With the last patch I can't even seem to get into the game!! I've updated my drivers and yesterday I reinstalled the entire game. It is intermittant sometimes it works but most of the time it either shows the desktop while playing the startup music and showing a mouse icon, or the screen is black and it plays music.
I'm really frustrated with the issues I'm having with this game. I like the game play and quests and find it entertaining and fun but the technical issues are starting to piss me off. Does anyone else have these kinds of problems? I'm considering going out and buying vista and completely reinstalling my os....
Other games seem to work fine. I can play hellgate london, Vanguard, even swg without problems. Anyone have any advice before I deltree my entire eq2 directory...
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Ethion
fyi I found the source of the problem. It looks like it has something to do with xfire. When xfire is running EQ2 won't start when I kill xfire it works fine.
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Ethion
I'm sorry but I agree with the OP. I'm what you would call a PC Enthusiast. I do everything with PC's thats possible to do, building, repairing, installing Mac OS's, Linux Distros, things like that. I'm also a hardcore gamer and have been for 10 years.
I just built this PC to play everything on the market and future games as well.
Intel Quad Core Q6600 Overclocked @ 3.4 Ghz
2GB DDR2 Ram
nVidia 8800GT 512MB Overclocked as well
Windows XP Pro SP2
Thats really the only important hardware you should know about to make judgment. Everything I throw at this it runs like a champ, I can even run Crysis with Very High Settings (forced, DX10 mode in XP, yes its possible look it up) at 20+ FPS in most areas. In Team Fortress 2 I get 200+ FPS most of the time. Call of Duty 4 is always 100+.
I know how to tune a computer and I know theres no issues with it. I score 15,200+ on 3DMark06 which puts my computer in the top 2% that have been tested.
Sounds good and everything right? Kinda sounds like I'm bragging? Well.. I'm not, and this game just has horrible coding. I'm barely getting better performance than my AMD Athlon 3800 X2, 7800GT setup.
Here's some screenies.
WARNING, These are pretty big, I run at 1680x1050 widescreen resolution so unless your resolution is that size or bigger its gonna be pretty large.
http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/7126/11fpswtfxg6.jpg
My FPS Dipped atleast that low and would stay under that for at least a minute or so depending on where I was.
And just to prove what kind of computer I have I stuck it in windows mode and brought up some programs to show I'm tellin the truth.
http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/7813/20fpswtfld1.jpg
in CPUZ look down at Core Speed, 3400 MHZ = 3.4 ghz,
another dip in FPS, it wasn't this low the entire time but theres NO reason that it should dip that low with my computer, an extra gig of ram wouldn't make a significant difference.
My average FPS was about 30-35.
Say all you want, this is real world performance I'm receiving and theres no excuse, I got better FPS on my old PC in Vanguard and it looks way better if you ask me.
I don't currently play any MMO's so it's not like i'm being a fanboy putting down EQ2. I just install it every now and then and see how its doing, end up not being able to keep interest and uninstalling until I do the same. I was severely disappointed with this performance.
Maybe it would be better if I wasn't running at Extreme Settings, but I WANT to run at extreme settings, this game should be able to run at extreme settings and look amazing and run amazing.
I wasn't even in a big city or populated area either.
Thats because xfire hooks into Directx 9, its probably a directx error. I had problems with Xfire and CoD4 when I tried to chagne resolutions and had Xfire up.
Thats because xfire hooks into Directx 9, its probably a directx error. I had problems with Xfire and CoD4 when I tried to chagne resolutions and had Xfire up.
I think it might have been due to an xfire update not happening properly. There was an update awhile back that my firewall software blocked some part of. After the update things worked so I didn't think anything of it but now in hindsight I'm thinking that combined with the eq2 update might have combined to create some sort of problem.
I'm going to try uninstalling and reinstalling xfire after I'm happy that the problem is truely gone. Maybe in a week or so.
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Ethion
I understand they make mmos to last a few years so as you progress you game kepps looking better and better. The problem I have for this is most folks after 2 years quit the game from boredom and move on to the newer. Why make a game that runs crappy at launch and expect it to get better after 2+years? Most players will judge a game within the 1st 20plus levels or less they should make a game current to its release date imo make the game run well so it gets a good start.
I think any MMO with 100k+ subs is fine
and theres plenty of them.... Ultima Online, Everquest, City of Heroes, DAOC
EQ2 fan sites
I think any MMO with 100k+ subs is fine
and theres plenty of them.... Ultima Online, Everquest, City of Heroes, DAOC
In fairness though UO and EQ cant be attracting many new players nowadays but its a testiment to how good they where back in the day that they've kept these sort of numbers of the yearsIt makes you wonder if the current crop of new MMOs will still be going this strong in a few years time.
EQ and UO aside
City of Heroes has alway hovered around 150k subs -- and its a 4 year old game (or will be in April)
EQ2 fan sites
I had similar issues and what I found was that it was a memory problem. Like you I had 2gb and thought it should be easy. But if you look at taskmanager I'll bet you will find that eq2 on extreme is eating up 1.6+ gb or ram which unless you run a really lean computer means you will hit 2gb and start swaping.
I upgraded to 4gb and now I don't have any swaping issues however I still can't play on extreme for some reason I'm now getting dxrenderer errors periodically on very high and extreme settings.
Honestly the issue is that the eq2 engine is just plain poor. Like you said VG runs a lot better on my couputer....
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Ethion
VG is brand new, honey.
I've had the exact same problem,
A month ago i was using a dated pc with the agp system but it was a pentium 4 3.2ghz 1950 pro and it was fast memory etc but eq2 ran totally crap on it had to play on lowest settings.
It was obvious to me after researching that i needed a new rig to do good gaming, allthough on other games my old system ran them fine. so i spent a good $800 on upgrading my pc to play through on high settings,
The system i bought was e6750 core 2 duo 266ghz(overclocked to 3.2) gigabyte x38 4gig ram 500 watt power supply antec 8800 gt(standard clocked) samsung pebble (no matter on the subject)
Overall I was amazed with the difference in all latest games a massive improvement, sadly my eq2 subscription ran out so i tried a trial version "play the fae" in XP since aall games supposedly play better in xp I was hugely unimpressed firstly it was like it was doing internet lag and then freezing lke it was my cpu lagging then some places it was jerking like my graphic card wasnt good enough. I tried max settings for 1 hour then high settings with shadows without shadows(no improvements) run smooth on high perfomance(still an upgrade)
I have a 3mb line so i've put it down to my computer not running it good, I love eq2 the game its the best mmorpg out there for me without doubt, but I bought vanguard, i got it for cheaper and wanted to try a new game out.
First I was skeptical, thought if i couldnt play eq2 forget vanguard but I loaded it into XP and it ran flawlessly on max settings average 40fps mostly in cities 20-25 now the looks off it is wierd somethings look great somethings look crap it's mixed with beauty and ugliness to be honest, like some of the tree's and just the detail of the characters in vanguard look really uninspriring, but on the other hand the environment and detail of other things like the walls make it probably the best looking mmorpg out there.
The conclusion is EQ2 shouldn't be harder to run then vanguard but it's proving the case for me on XP32, I also have vista 64 and the scenario was reversed I tried the trial of eq2 two days ago on vista for an hour or so on high settings and it ran nicely, which gives me some hope, as for me i would much prefer EQ2 gameplay then vanguard.
Yeah alas the game play in eq2 is much better then VG... If VG had decent quests and a high lvl game I'm be there. But for me I've kinda leveled up enough that I've burned through most of the good stuff and Just haven't been able to get back into it since I left for eq2. Eq2 I'm enjoying quite a bit. I love the quests and all the things to do.
VG will probably get there in time and I'm pretty sure I'll go back to it in 5-6 months and by then I'll have maxed out eq2 and be looking for something new. Perhaps I'll do AoC it just depends on how pvp it is oriented and how the combat system works. I'm pretty sceptical about new games now days since they always seem lacking in content and sometimes come full of bugs.
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Ethion