Everquest II

They did reitemize the zone in like tier 7 I believe. Gear was unique and a lot better than it was previously.
Tbh I hated that zone in tier 5. I didnt have a good amount of RAM and id crash everytime

dizzie said:

Sol's Eye was fucking epic. When I first started playing we went in there at level 25 or so as nothing inside could see invis for the first few weeks (same with perma) and we were all following a swashy with the group invis (snuggle) where you had to stay real close or it popped. Great times, scary as hell as you'd never get a corpse back from deep inside with level 52 crap all over. And the music was killer in that zone.

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How did you get there at 25? Didnt the access quest to LS require you to be 37

Second that, Sol's Eye is my favorite eq2 zone, hands down. Permafrost comes in second, but not even close.

I really enjoyed sinking sands in T6 and most of the Kunark zones personally.

I thought VP raid was fun at the time.

Calbiyum said:

How did you get there at 25? Didnt the access quest to LS require you to be 37

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I'm not sure how we got into Sol maybe the access quest wasn't in? Don't know, we used to hit alot of high end zones invis as it gave absolutely tons of xp compared to questing/grinding (and it's fun as shit being surrounded by stuff that will one shot you). Game was so much fun at that point as it was all groups. Really liked the fact that rares (ebon, ruby etc) were rare as hell if you went harvesting, you could go days and days without getting one and the gear it made if you did was nearly on par with or better in some slots than raid stuff. Some of the heritage questline rewards being uber, golden boots, screaming mace, fbss, were pretty much bis until prismatics. And you had Robe of the invoker and Blightrat reflection BP (both rare are hell drops from normal heroics which were perma camped 24/7).

DoF was great and the peacock questline is my favourite in the game. Competition was fierce for godking eyes in silent city (when they were an access requirement).

For me, the best time in EQ2 was the year or so after the release of Nagafen server. EQ2 pvp was surprisingly fun for quite some time. Blue servers didn't hold my attention for long, but pvp was fantastic even with all the broken bullshit, balance issues, and awkwardness of combat the game had. Played a Troubador at the time and would often duo with this Aussie Berserker. We owned Enchanted Lands for a while. Game had some cools features with forced target changes with taunt/detaunt etc.

Flobee said:

For me, the best time in EQ2 was the year or so after the release of Nagafen server. EQ2 pvp was surprisingly fun for quite some time. Blue servers didn't hold my attention for long, but pvp was fantastic even with all the broken bullshit, balance issues, and awkwardness of combat the game had. Played a Troubador at the time and would often duo with this Aussie Berserker. We owned Enchanted Lands for a while. Game had some cools features with forced target changes with taunt/detaunt etc.

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There is someone working on an emulated eq2 pvp server if you want info pm me

EQ2 was fun at vanilla, but it was a mess past level 40.....they were still working on the zones at launch.

My static group of poopsockers was the first one to hit 50, around lvl 35 or so Hartsman showed up personally on Mistmoore to our group and told us to give them like 30 minutes so they could finish some last minute stuff on the Feerott (right after we finished the quest that unlocked it....because the zone wasn't ready yet for players and they were frantically trying to make it playable).

But yea, Sol Eye was impressive and goddman that dungeon was massive but completely unfinished as well. Vox was the very first raid mob killed in EQ2 and dropped a wooden box with like 3 common items for us because her loot table was the same as the zone trash mobs in Permafrost. They were just doing stuff on the fly during those days, sucked a lot but it was still a fun ride. The zones that were done had great lore etc if you actually took the time to pay attention to it, like Stormhold in Antonica tying in to the bone bladed claymore from EQ1. Nektropos Castle was always one of my favorites, it was well done and was about the limit on content that was actually polished.....I think every high level dungeon past it had nothing distinguishable from what I remember.

I always wanted to know who was lvl 50 first in eq2 yo but thats pretty cool they were literally telling u they needed to finish shit lol

Also yeah the lore is pretty great if you look into it. I really enjoyed the whole drakota attacking the boats and the captain saying its like theyre looking for something. Then the prismatic quest you find out its the egg

Genjiro said:

EQ2 was fun at vanilla, but it was a mess past level 40.....they were still working on the zones at launch.

My static group of poopsockers was the first one to hit 50, around lvl 35 or so Hartsman showed up personally on Mistmoore to our group and told us to give them like 30 minutes so they could finish some last minute stuff on the Feerott (right after we finished the quest that unlocked it....because the zone wasn't ready yet for players and they were frantically trying to make it playable).

But yea, Sol Eye was impressive and goddman that dungeon was massive but completely unfinished as well. Vox was the very first raid mob killed in EQ2 and dropped a wooden box with like 3 common items for us because her loot table was the same as the zone trash mobs in Permafrost. They were just doing stuff on the fly during those days, sucked a lot but it was still a fun ride. The zones that were done had great lore etc if you actually took the time to pay attention to it, like Stormhold in Antonica tying in to the bone bladed claymore from EQ1. Nektropos Castle was always one of my favorites, it was well done and was about the limit on content that was actually polished.....I think every high level dungeon past it had nothing distinguishable from what I remember.

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I remember raiding in T5 and half the time the mobs dropped wood, sometimes if you were really unlucky you'd get a linen or something (rather than a bent ebon disc or ruby etc). I think there was a few times we never even got a rare just a wood box with a couple trash items.

The lore was very well done then fell apart for reasons I described. Mainly too many cooks.

In Vanilla the story you were told as you leveled and no longer exists completely:

Captain Varos finds you in the ocean and saves you, making note of your bravery. Him and his crew are ferrying survivors of the Shattered Lands from the Island to qeynos and Freeport.

Varos continues to meet you each time you expand to a new island. He seems to know everything about the Lore of these places.

Finally you hit Lavastorm where you find the Sage of Ages (the author of the preEQ2 lore) captured by drakota. After saving him he tells you the Drakota are being controlled by Nagafen. He asks you to find out what he did to piss off Naggy. After a huge pita of learning ancient draconic Nagafen explains he does not have the harness.

Ok this is cool. Drakota are retarded dragons. No. Really. They’re born without an element but increased density to their hide and their claws can even rend the most powerful dragon flesh. Because of Veeshans First Law they can not harm them but instead use a mental or magical control called The Harness. Each Drakotas intelligence has been neutered and they spend their days under the compulsion of whoever wields said harness.

Long story shorter. Varos and the Sage are a dragon named Darathar. He was given the Harness by the Claws of Veeshan to destroy Nag and Vox preventing another Prismatic. Using the Drakota to circumvent the first law is pure sophistry but whatever. Darathar killed Vox but didn’t know Nag had made deals with Najena and possibly Sol Ro as well. When Darathar chases Nag into Lavastorm he somehow loses the harness and the Drakota are Rogue now. This battle is EPIC. And sadly barely exists in the lore.

Nag tasks you with recovering Voxs sole egg. However the Giants steal it, you steal it, Darathar steals it, and then it’s crushed. Naggy laughs and shows you he has an entire clutch of prismatic eggs.

The end. Those eggs will clearly take thousand of years and won’t factor in until Devs say so again. Great start to a story though. And I’m skipping the void, orcs, venekor, etc etc. It was a great launch point for story telling.

That's how it went with them, lots of great ideas, no actual implementation of them.

A couple of guys in the guild I led spent months of time reading every bit of lore, looking for everything about the frogluks thinking it would unlock them because devs on the forums (Moorguard) had even said they were in the game but players needed to figure it out. They wanted to be the first to figure it out, so they spent a ton of time on it. Then all of a sudden some bullshit instanced zone was put in place that was buggy as shit..they took the easy way out and added it in after the fact about lying it was in the game. There was actually a ton of lore in the game about them.......and it made sense if you read it how it seemed to be a big secret. How the ogres and frogluks went to war and they made their last stand in Guk and sealed it off etc. Both of those guys almost quit after, needless to say it was a huge waste of their time.

Anyways, they asked us to test that instance zone to unlock them. I forget their lead mechanics guy/raid guy back then but he was such a fucking tool. The epitome of condescending. Idk how many times I told them it was buggy, badly scripted, even laid out what they could do to fix it by moving spawn points (they used the old Ct zone as a placeholder which was notorious for mobs getting stuck in the geometry which is what happened).

Anyways, funny story.....shit zone got released, and it would bug out and random people would get stuck outside of the zone if you died setting their lockout timer. This happened to everyone.........but funny enough Schillings guild (whatever the Eq2 version of BotS was) ended up getting the worldfirst kill on it. Then we find out Moorguard became friends with him, and removed all of their guildmates lockout timers for them so they could be the first. No surprise he went to work for that dick for 38 studios, but as we all know, karma won in the end. Fuck both of those guys.

Lanx said:

For me, it was avatar hunting, being the dominant guild that took the avatars. IDK how i was able to lead my guild into doing all the dumb strats for not only hours, but days on end. After i got t6 avatar boots, it was almost impossible to kill me proc'in stoneskin.

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Ah, Reinforced Slippers of Balance probably the most overpowered item ever in the game. There were so many tears when they nerfed those. The avatars were fun as hell if you were on a competitive server.

Lanx said:

Yea i have no idea why they would even nerf them since they are just a rando drop, only 3 dropped and all 3 were for my guild. these were the t6 boots, the t7 were already nerfed i believed.

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Yeah the t7 boots were already nerfed , the t6 ones were the ones that proced pretty much all the time. Took them years to nerf those, was a good run if you had a pair.

EQ2 could have been fun...

If only they hadn't designed combat to be an exercise in binding 1-10, ALT+ 1-10, and CTRL+ 1-10...

For the life of me I never understood how someone (developers) could have possibly thought that style of "combat" would be enjoyable.

Me and Arkmaru starting up a forum for eq2 if you guys can register at http://www.eq2progression.com/

Can share all these old stories there too