Everquest II

Honestly, I had no regret leaving EQ for EQ2 back in 2004. I had so much fun in this game and would do it all over again.

They need to fire who ever designs their boss encounters, cause dear lord....they have have no idea what fun is. Also they need to reevaluate mercenaries cause I have a healing mercenary that takes a lot of time considering if I should get a heal.

Serwol said:

They need to fire who ever designs their boss encounters, cause dear lord....they have have no idea what fun is. Also they need to reevaluate mercenaries cause I have a healing mercenary that takes a lot of time considering if I should get a heal.

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Eq2 used to have some of the best and most fun raids/group content I’ve participated in.

All the avatars were good at various points and stuff like 4 rune RT was great for the time. sure it’s not as complex as GW2 or FF, lots of boss encounters were well designed however. But there were often bugs, exploits and the inevitable tuning with encounters. Group and raid content got fucked once they started adding crit mit back in the day, which now feels like it was a precursor to the resolve thing we see today.

I had shitloads of fun playing boss content in EQ2 and I’m sure a few others here did when the raiding was competitive and servers were busy.

dizzie said:

Eq2 used to have some of the best and most fun raids/group content I’ve participated in.

All the avatars were good at various points and stuff like 4 rune RT was great for the time. sure it’s not as complex as GW2 or FF, lots of boss encounters were well designed however. But there were often bugs, exploits and the inevitable tuning with encounters. Group and raid content got fucked once they started adding crit mit back in the day, which now feels like it was a precursor to the resolve thing we see today.

I had shitloads of fun playing boss content in EQ2 and I’m sure a few others here did when the raiding was competitive and servers were busy.

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I have noted a few mechanics that all bosses seem to now share in dungeons, at least solo dungeons, which is they tend to have an energy drain ability, you always get a debuff that ticks for damage every 3 seconds (One boss I struggled on would tick for 14 - 15% of your total health every 3 seconds for the entire fight with no way to get rid of it), there is some instakill mechanic, or it summons adds. Ontop of that there is another debuff that just exists that subtracts from the amount of healing you get.

So instead of making mechanics that require you to perhaps move around and execute, it feels as though they got lazy and now just a game of attrition with every fight where you might have to step out of something or have to kill an add before you get overwhelmed.

Serwol said:

I have noted a few mechanics that all bosses seem to now share in dungeons, at least solo dungeons, which is they tend to have an energy drain ability, you always get a debuff that ticks for damage every 3 seconds (One boss I struggled on would tick for 14 - 15% of your total health every 3 seconds for the entire fight with no way to get rid of it), there is some instakill mechanic, or it summons adds. Ontop of that there is another debuff that just exists that subtracts from the amount of healing you get.

So instead of making mechanics that require you to perhaps move around and execute, it feels as though they got lazy and now just a game of attrition with every fight where you might have to step out of something or have to kill an add before you get overwhelmed.

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It was heading this way when I quit in ToT so I can only presume it’s gotten worse as they’ve no real dev team anymore. Everything’s copy paste garbage.

For a while there they really had the fun down to pat. I think from release to SF was pretty good overall. It’s nosedived since, the bloat, cash shop, endless fucked economy due to duped plat etc all put nails into the games coffin.

Never felt the wonder elsewhere I felt in Eq2 just exploring all the zones, invising about in a group and shit. Was great as the game was pretty deadly in some areas, oops, sols, perma etc. The world was fantastic for the most part, especially early in the games life.

Such a shame it’s ended up like this.

EQ2 has some of the best dungeon crawls I've ever done. Nek Castle and Sols come to mind first, but even newbie stuff like Blackburrow, Stormhold?, Zek, that DE cave in Commonlands. Good stuff

Kirun said:

Wait, what? You START at cap but delevel to group with people who are ALSO at cap? The fuck?

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I think of this as sort of like a museum server. You get to experience all content at the difficulty it had when it launched. There's a lot of old zones that I haven't gone into in years because they weren't efficient for leveling and didn't have good rewards, so nobody wanted to do them at level. But if the context of the server is that vertical progression is secondary to achievement hunting, then I think it could create a dynamic where you see people going into every piece of content ever made and nothing is ever steamrolled or trivialized.

Kriptini said:

I think of this as sort of like a museum server. You get to experience all content at the difficulty it had when it launched. There's a lot of old zones that I haven't gone into in years because they weren't efficient for leveling and didn't have good rewards, so nobody wanted to do them at level. But if the context of the server is that vertical progression is secondary to achievement hunting, then I think it could create a dynamic where you see people going into every piece of content ever made and nothing is ever steamrolled or trivialized.

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They didn’t have good rewards but if you wanted bis items you did nearly every zone in the game.

One thing I think Eq2 did right was most zones got a lot of use on release, heritage quest items were the best in the game and a lot of those required traversing multiple zones/dungeons/bosses/rare spawns. Plus there were other quests, speak like a dragon etc which required a lot of zones/access quests.

Sure, you didn’t grind some dungeons often but you had to regularly visit them enough that you got to know them and the zones weren’t empty. It was clever use of assets forcing players to visit lots of places in the world.

On release you could be in a zone for 6 hours or more camping. I spent around 18 hours camping agony for screaming mace on release and then spent another 2 days in CT camping the other shit you needed. The camps were long on release, some stuff was on a 7 day timer.

Forced you to learn lots of zones very well.

Kirun said:

You. Start. At. Cap.

About 4 people are going to play on this server after a week or two.

You honestly think DPG has a team large enough to create a bunch of unique "achievement" awards/progression? ROFL. Just like they had GMs for their "GM Dedicated" Aradune and Rizlona servers, right??

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Its been a long as time since I've played EQ2. Isn't there alternate XP ? If all content gives AA, that is the incentive to do whatever horizontal content you want. Its challenging since it is all level scaled and flattened out. I'm assuming the theory here is that you start at level cap, can do whatever content you want to increase AA, and they would need to redo loot tables to prior content can drop gear you would actually want.

If there is no AA path, and there is no loot table adjustments, I agree this is destined for failure.

There are AA in EQ2. Starting at Cap is a big nono to me. Leveling is a part of the fun.

Kirun said:

You. Start. At. Cap.

About 4 people are going to play on this server after a week or two.

You honestly think DPG has a team large enough to create a bunch of unique "achievement" awards/progression? ROFL. Just like they had GMs for their "GM Dedicated" Aradune and Rizlona servers, right??

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The achievements don't even need to be unique, and IMO, the server doesn't even need that much support if they get the scaling done right. As someone who likes to replay EQ2 every now and then just for nostalgia's sake, I could absolutely see myself playing on this server one or two months every year. Don't need to worry about leveling, just sub for my nostalgia fix, unsub, then come back next year.

Kriptini said:

The achievements don't even need to be unique, and IMO, the server doesn't even need that much support if they get the scaling done right. As someone who likes to replay EQ2 every now and then just for nostalgia's sake, I could absolutely see myself playing on this server one or two months every year. Don't need to worry about leveling, just sub for my nostalgia fix, unsub, then come back next year.

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Now that you mention it - why isn't every other server like this for the entire leveling experience?
Start at max level, trim the bloat, gain abilities as you learn how to play your class. Scaled down like this server.
Completion of more lower level achievements unlock more of your toolkit progressively. Always consider the player to be max level or 'fighting even cons' for the area they're in, but hide that visually.

Then you proceed to the shitfest that is Destiny of Velious after you feel comfortable and have most of your kit unlocked.

I am seeing how bad their push for RMT has become now that I am at max level with a character.....I am unable to progress in the SQ for the latest expansion because a solitary boss in one of the "Solo" instances wrecks me. I looked up advice and even dared ask on the EQ2 reddit and what I seem stuck having to do is spend a whooooole bunch of time waiting for my mount/familiar/mercenary to get leveled so I can throe gear in them....or I could spend some Daybreak fun monies and speed up the process!

This is also an issue for upgrading abilities with spell scrolls....you can "research" upgrades but those take 30+ days to do...unless you spend DBC (Daybreak cash)
Or you can buy crafter made/dropped spells scrolls of the Broker....for millions of plat....but if you buy "Chrono" for $18 dollars a pop and then sell it for plat you are good to go.

So they seem to have little reason to fix or streamline any of their systems as it all pushes you toward dumping money onto them to speed things up.

RMT is real in EQ TLP, EQ2 TLE . You need exp potion to compete, that's another big nono, the good old days are long gone.

Even back in 2010 when I last played it was full on buy grandmaster spells to compete. Shit was a nightmare.

Gear wasn’t a problem at all as I got all the loot from a couple of raid nights on restarting but the spell things a total load of bollocks. By this point they decided to make masters really rare. I snagged 4 masters from my guild but that was all they had available if I remember right.

I had a research potion to make one gm but I ended up paying for 5-6 spells being an illy And I think it cost about £25-30 per spell which is a lot on top of the sub and cost of the expac. They nickle and dime you to fuck if you want to be competitive.

There is a debuff in solos, not sure if it is in the actual group versions of dungeons that reduces the healing you receive by a massive amount....I have a healer mercenary who's healing abilities do nothing because they do not break the threshold of the debuff.....but....if you spend real money to open up gear slots on the merc....*wink wink*