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My EQ2 beta review.
unpoet
Member Posts: 59
When i first heard about EQ2 i never really thought it was going to be all that good, but after playing the beta for the last month I've decided EQ2 is in general its a well thought out and decent game. Now its not all going to be praise as i will further explain below but i did exceed my expectations(which ill admit were rather low). Oh, and excuse my poor grammar and sentence structure, its the public education systems fault!
Grafix!
I did not like the avatar models i saw in screenshots before i started playing, and my opinion on this has not changed after playing the beta. If anything i dislike them more now. The models in general look very unrealistic, almost cartoony or porcelain doll like. I'm not sure if this can be blamed on the concept drawings or the people that actually put them into game but they definitely rub me the wrong way. Basically i feel these character models are the biggest problem with this game for two reason, they don't look that great AND worst of all they take up tons of memory on your computer which causes massive lag when you turn up the grafix settings.
The level, or map design in the game was actually quite nice. Lots of direct 9 water and blur effects on the almost all the areas i went too, but I'm sure you have all seen screenshots by now. I liked the dungeon designs a lot, they allowed for groups to "dungeon crawl" around smoothly and easily, letting you make exp and finish quests along the way.
Gameplay!
Well its nothing innovative, but then again why mess with success i say. This game seemed to have borrowed a lot of the more enjoyable aspects from many of the other mmorpgs out there since eq1 came out but with their own twist on it. I don't know if anyone else feels this way but there were a few things that reminded me of final fantasy 11, this included things such as the player housing, the Heroic Opportunities(skill chains in ff11) and the newly implemented broker system which is a lot like the auction house in ff11. Gameplay really is the strongest point for me so far, getting a group together is very easy and don't really need to be all that balanced to be successful either. There are tons of quest and most of them reward you with a good chunk of exp, most of them are done while your group roams around the dungeon as well. For example: Kill 10 rats. Solo exp content is there aswell, anyone can make good solo experience. Of course its not as good grouping but its there if you want to.
System Performance!
Well it crashes and lags a lot(both server side and system lag) but this is beta so these are forgivable. The only problem i see from this is that the game still has a few bugs to work and i would be very surprised to see them release this before christmas.
Right now you need at least 1 gig of ram to run this game at balanced(medium setting), in fact even on high performance i get swap file lag with 1 gig of ram. People with only 512megs of ram will have to run EQ2 on the lowest settings no matter how fast their CPU or video card is. To put this in perspective i can run doom3 at ultra quality without having to turn pagefile system on at all. EQ2 will crash on medium settings with 1 gig of ram if i don't turn that swapfile on. This game takes up more system memory then any other computer game thats ever existed on the planet! if you ran EQ2 at maximum setting(which i haven't met anyone that can) you would need about 1.5gigs maybe even 2gigs of ram to play smoothly. The reason for this large use of memory is completely the character models fault, and they dont look good enough to justify the bloated file size either. Now they do have "low detail" models to help with this but they are horrid blurry blobs thats vaguely resemble people and should only be viewed at a distance or else they cause nausea.
ill just finish by saying is that overall its fun and has potential but does have some problems.
Comments
sounds like the game sucked. but SOE is behind the game, so what do you expect? since they stick to traditional mmorpg features, why not play WoW instead?
Wow I feel like i'm reading about 2 different games here
http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=general&message.id=216582&no_redir=true
I guess its going to be a case of actually trying it out to find out, my understanding was the gameplay was very much different with quests being an active part of the game, the combat being overhauled, the UI being changed and so forth. Anyone able to say which review is more accurate?
Tals
I tried highest settings ..its like playing quake on a modem for me fps wise. I only use it when i want nice screenshots. And yea i have 2G ram and a radeon 9800xt card.
/Binaa
I have 1GB RAM and an nVidia 5700LE card. I don't crash and the lag, if any, doesn't last long and isn't to the point you can't move effectively (heck, I've even fought mobs successfully with lag).
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Chavez y Chavez
People like this is a big reason I'm not going to WoW.
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"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
-- Ken Olson, chairman of Digital Equipment Corp, 1977
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"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
-- Ken Olson, chairman of Digital Equipment Corp, 1977
Thanks Tals. That (link) was a very well-written, well thought out review.
While I respect differing opinions of players, I will reserve my judgements til after I have had a chance to experience the game. I hope I get that chance soon!
I am amazed at how people can look at the same information and come up with totally opposite impressions.
1. Models - I think most are really great. I personally don't like the Barbarian females, they just don't look like women to me (I was a Barbarian in EQ Live and liked that model MUCH better), and I dislike the Euridites (they look like bald aliens to me without a lot of individualized looks). That said, a lot of people like the ones I dislike so to each his own. The rest of the character models are really great IMHO.
2. Game Play - I think this is awesome and very different from EQ Live. Yes you can go out and do mob hack and slash just like any game, but if you choose to play this differently you have that option. The quest/experience system is great. Another difference is the group mob intelligence factor, making tactics more important in this game. They have eliminated some irritations for those grouping, for example as a cleric I can keep my main tank targeted and without switching targets, if power (mana) permits, I can nuke the mob. The game automatically will take a damage spell and apply it to the main tanks target. This eliminates clerics, wizards, and others from attacking the wrong mobs, breaking a mez or missing an important heal because they don't know how to use assists properly.
3. System - I have 1 Gig of RAM and an NVida graphics card with 256 on board memory. I experience some lag on occasion, but most of the time I'm fine. I have my setting pretty high. I may have to either upgrade my RAM or turn down my settings once the game goes live and more people are in the zones. The level of detail in the game is impressive, and if you want to experience all of the graphics effects, including shadows and the grass leaving your foot prints, you will need a system that can handle it. Even with much of that turned off, I think it is better than anything I have seen in any other game.
4. Lag - Yes it exists on server side in some zones. It is Beta, they are aware of it and are working on it. It happens in almost every game I've ever been in, and yes it is frustrating. I haven't found it to be horribly disruptive in this game so far.
Minxx
Minxx
Just a note on the preformance, i have 2.4 processer, pentium 4, geforce 5500 FX, 768 mb of RAM, and it is a dell.....a dell......
It is very possible for me to run it at balanced (medium) with a very acceptable amount of lag. But being the person i am who really doesn't care about a tiny bit of graphics i set mine to high preforamcne (1 lower than medium), and i run most parts of the game with very low lag. Of course there are spots of lag such as lots of people around <cough>PoK type lag<cough>, and of course there is still server lag <cough>lagonica<cough>, but this is beta and with the last few patchs the lag has really been cut down.
As of right now i would have to give the game an 8.5 out of 10, but as seeing this is beta and with each patch adding massive amounts of info/stuff, i could easily see how my rating could go up.
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The True Oracle of all that is EverQuest!!
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"You sir, are a moron"