Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Norrathian Stride - Returning To EverQuest II | MMORPG.com
System
Member UncommonPosts: 12,599
Norrathian Stride - Returning To EverQuest II | MMORPG.com
For the majority of his twenties, Jonathan was a hardcore EverQuest player. When EverQuest II launched, J eagerly jumped back into Norrath, and while it hooked him for a while, he inevitably went back to the OG EQ. Now, in 2021, Jonathan has returned to Norrath - how does this experience hold up years later? Check out the first installment of the Norrathian Stride, a new column about EverQuest II.
Comments
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
Best mmorpg gaming ever, the golden years, when mmorpg's were mmorpg's
i applied the 120 token to my main and only found level 110 gear with the token. my last xpac was KA so i needed to do the panda quest to 2020 to adjust the accession level... at release of shadows i zoned in and got the 120 starter gear. i tried the new expansion for a few hours and was totally lost.
so i started a level one vahshir BL. leveled quest timelines to about 30. logged in a second account with an old level 100 and did dungeons 10 levels higher with mentor to bring the BL up to 74.
at this point i have sold items on broker and setup digs in qeynos. after 3 months all i have to show is a level 74 BL and a 120 main that needs to do some required back quests to do the current expansion.
thought about jumping over to EQ and play my cleric. passed on that due to can't afford to have 3 accounts to PL the cleric to endgame.
i also played WoW for 3 months, preordered their expansion but canceled. i then settled on EQ/EQ2 and think that was worth the cost.
i don't plan to sub to any MMO anymore. have dropped console subs too. most games are on Steam-PCs and console wars need to resolve IMO.
ARK and Fallout 76 have filled the craving that EQ/EQ2 used to cover. ESO and RPGs like skyrim, Halo complete, Fallout 4, Destiny 2, and Division 2 seem to be working for me.
the EQ/EQ2 community seems to be hitting the AARP zone. Subs have to drop for me to visit EQ/EQ2/Wow more often. i will pay for games, just tired of paying for promises and i'm beyond FOMO mode now.
Me when i got into this mmorpg vice, i played SWG and EQ2 that was it, and mainly as i loved both but server down time was thing too. Nothing worse than going to log in and server down.
Wow happened and spent so much time bouncing around to a new mmorpg every other week after i came to the realization that they have destroyed EQ2 for wow pie by 2008.
Bouncing was fun I'll admit that, but what i loved most about mmorpgs is that everything i did and will do always counts, going adhd on them was a waste yet not a waste as it was fun, but once the fun was over, all i did, all i accomplished, was wasted as i went off to yet another mmorpg wow pie chaser.
Today i play SWG:L and WOW as my EQ2 replacement, pay sub = play and earn, pc only, no real cash shop, and no real p2w unless you want to go broke, the token doesn't buy much, same deal as eve plex, don't like the token, but rather deal with that then deal with farmers, i mean farmers are real so pay to win always existed in every mmorpg like it or not.
I tried to come back to EQ2 several times and to me, it's a mess, it's not what it once was, coming in new and fresh yeah it's probably a good mmo.
Talking about Collections? Ugh, tell me about it. I can't just NOT pick up a shiny if I walk by it.
The majority were happy and had fun grouping together and exploring new areas and doing the armor/set quests.
There was an outside presence however from i imagine hardcore EQ1 fans who despised everything about EQ2.I took it all as being jealous that a lot of EQ1 players were being lost to this new game.
Yes there were bugs drawing npc mobs,yes there was the typical aggro through walls but overall i would say we were having fun.
This was a new look for me having already been playing FFXI.So Wow came out about a week later,so i tried that as well but within the first minute i was already turned off.First the players were acting extremely immature in Wow and the way the game just dropped me off at some cheap looking caravan was a real poor way to immerse me into the game.So i went back and split time with FFXi and EQ2.
IMO EQ2 went downhill at a point when al lof SOE seem to be struggling for money and as a whole.The team made some lame crap changes that told me the game was moving in the wrong direction.It also became clear the game was going to be a TIER game,just repeating the same cycle over and over at each new 10 level tier so it became boring for me.
I should also point out that very early they also made changes to death penalties and we can blame the players for that,a lot of crying and blaming on deaths.I also want to point out that "scaling" is NEVER good.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
We still play off and on every once in a while, but it's definitely a game on life support and it shows. The new city SharVahl is nearly empty with very little life, content is being reused from previous expansions, and the numbers desperately need a major squish with some numbers in the billions.
I purchased the new expansion, hit 120 with my Barb Paladin, finished all the sig and side quests along with all of the trade skill quests for the expansion. Although I didn't find much of the content to be challenging (only had issues with 2 bosses in solo instances due to my gear) I still feel I got my money's worth from the collector's edition ($90.00) and managed to talk my wife back into playing.
We're messing around with the agnostic dungeons taking a break to do some questing when we hit levels where we missed the expansion content.
We were having a blast and was not long till we got max level. I rolled an Enchanter and my wife a Wizard if I remember right. When it come to join our guild for raids and dungeon runs at top end. Everyone had their set people they would team with and we were completely ignored.
After about a month of this, we decided to start looking for other guilds. No matter where we landed, the community was not looking for new people to join their rotation of players.
It often was the same seen. 10-20 people would log on, team up or raid up. Do their content in 1-2 hours and just log off. Was odd. Wife and I just walked away after about 6 months of wasted time. Did enjoy the game itself though.
If you think it's bad as an All Access player, you should try playing as truly F2P. These older games, particularly EQ1 and EQ2 have changed so much that it is impractical or even impossible to play the base game and have any hope of catching up. It really does take 2 or more accounts to progress a character from level 1 to max level. Plus loads and loads of time.
My current task in EQ1 is to earn enough Faycitum (sp?) to actually buy something for my 76th level Beastlord. I'm at 108 today, minimum item price = 720+ for augments and about 2500+ for items (armor/weapons). I'd really like a weapon or a weapon augment. At my current pace and play time (roughly 1 hour a day), I'll be incredibly lucky to even come close this year. And that includes the supposition that my health will somehow improve and allow me to tolerate more than 1 hour a day.
And that's just to gear up enough to maybe handle content in the House of Thule expansion.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
I liked how you had to work at things, even flight paths, but everything became so easy
Favorite was the death penalty, they had it right the first time. Group penalty. Sitting waiting for a group member to navigate Nektulos while watching his health go down was just hilarious and "corpse runs" not quite as bad as EQ back in the day
Unfortunately, however fortunate for us that we were there, peeps today whom only ever played wow missed out huge.
Wow at its launch, and now having played it recently in classic, i can understand the draw, but my gawd EQ2 was only a trillion times better in every conceivable way outside world raids. World Raids was the draw, i mean vanilla pve wow must have been extremely boring.
Of all the time i've played WoW retail, my half a year in classic has a phenomenal amount of wonderful memories comparatively, where retail i dunno never really get any, but still i'm enjoying it, and then you have EQ2 and my 4 years there has more memories than my entire life of gaming combined.
It's a real shame what they did to that game. To nutshell it, EQ2 i look back and i totally feel like i was there, in a world, a fantasy world, a true escape, complete immersion, i've never come across that again, and unfortunate for others who will never know what they missed out on, no gamer will ever again. It's kinda easy to blame wow, but, look at the dumpster fire of gaming today overall, it was inevitable. People just love to play with their wallets, it's mind blowing, i thought we play games so we can "PLAY!".
This isn't a signature, you just think it is.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
My SK in EQ2 is now Level 15 as I wrote this post and I play on EU English Server. Here are my pros and cons.
Pros:
1. Huge world
2. Chest Drops (small to master)
3. Nameds and heroics - love that
4. Spell upgrades to master
5. Collect shinies (glowing "?")
6. Rewarding fights
7. Not so fast paced fights - time to Chat in downtimes
8. Buffs from other classes, which really make a different
9. Group benefits and mechanics, really missed that
10. Epic weapons quests
11. Long quest lines
12. Skill point based playing : You become better at xyz - this is still so great
13. Discovery EXP, kill EXP, mob group kill EXP, Player Group kill exp
14. reactive tradeskilling
Cons:
1. Outdated graphics
2. Stand still and fight, can become boring
3. Extremely low Server Population and overaged (not real life age, the EQ2 world age)
4. Despite I have state of the art Computer in the year 2021, I have lag, character movement and fighting warps
5. Responsiveness of spells is strange, Always like 500ms or 1s delay
6. Mercs stand a few meters next to you, doing nothing, you have to move mobs to mercs
7. Agroelist of mercs do not reset - you ride through mobs to a final destination, your agroelist is cleared, but your merc suddenly run back long distance to kill something
8. Prices in AH are extremely high, compared to gold Drops
9. Hard to find Groups
Pro and Con:
1. While this can be something good, it is also something not good - the sheer amount of spells - it is overwhelming and you just loose the overview
2. Character customization with AA, Prestige AA and so on - again, it is really nice to be able to customize your char, but at the end, it is so overwhelmin and TBH I don't want to sit down for Hours EQ2 Theorycrafting - then you get a new drop, and for me, then impossible to tell, if better or not
My conclusion:
I stay in EQ2 for my 30 days RoS plus 30 days Crono, lets see if I will be still playing after 60 days - Currently, I enjoy it very much - it is so refereshing to other AAA on the market. If the graphic would be just todays Standard, more responsive and higher population, it would be a no brainer to stay - however, the overaged community.
HF