Everquest Mysteries

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Conefed

Blackwing Lair Raider
2,789
1,633
I consider everything SoD and beyond to be "Extended Universe" and pretty much disregard it as far as canon is concerned. Once time travel enters the mix (and it does in MULTIPLE xpacs) everything goes to complete shit. The time travel aspect of the end of Plane of Time makes sense since all it is is us going back slightly on the timeline, not establishing a NEW timeline or that we were there the entire time (see SoD and like CoTF)
Scars of Delious?
 

Secrets

ResetEra Staff Member
1,860
1,856
Seeds of Destruction. When you start going back in time because Zebruxoruk is going to destroy the universe. Or something.

I agree, story went to shit after this point, and I also think that's about the time they gave up on full-fledged expansions. This was when EQ2 was doing time travel around the same time with Chains of Eternity, and by that point that game was pivoting to P2W / Krono as an income source.

BTW, don't play EQ2. Game is awful on live and the devs cannot seem to get itemization right on TLPs.

It also happened around the same time as a management shakeup and a lot of senior staff going to Intrepid Studios, so it doesn't surprise me.
 

Muligan

Trakanon Raider
3,209
890
I can't tell you how disappointed I have been that EQ2 never really got the attention it needed to salvage itself. It was really a much better game than people gave it credit, especially there about 2-3 years after release (Hartsman years).

They should have dropped everything and addressed ability bloat and a number of other pieces that really just crushed the game. They should have halted all expansions, TLP ideas, etc. until they fixed the core game and relaunched it and then moved forward.

The present state of the game is beyond painful and it was pretty painful years ago.

I really think it was the biggest missed opportunity in the MMO genre.
 
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kegkilla

The Big Mod
<Banned>
11,320
14,738
I can't tell you how disappointed I have been that EQ2 never really got the attention it needed to salvage itself. It was really a much better game than people gave it credit, especially there about 2-3 years after release (Hartsman years).

They should have dropped everything and addressed ability bloat and a number of other pieces that really just crushed the game. They should have halted all expansions, TLP ideas, etc. until they fixed the core game and relaunched it and then moved forward.

The present state of the game is beyond painful and it was pretty painful years ago.

I really think it was the biggest missed opportunity in the MMO genre.
EQ2 was shit. It was dead from the moment it launched with a total of 2 starting cities. Lazy garbage.
 
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Ukerric

Bearded Ape
<Silver Donator>
7,862
9,411
EQ2 was shit. It was dead from the moment it launched with a total of 2 starting cities. Lazy garbage.
I remember only a handful of bad decisions. Besides the shitty optimization of the client.
  • Hard factions (on that, I agree wholeheartedly)
  • The stupid "I'll wave to you to show you I have a quest for you"
  • The pick shit on the ground collection system
  • An uninspired, overly complicated class system
And that's pretty much it, I think? Granted, I did not play very long, since what my guild was really waiting for was WoW, and EU release was later.

It wasn't shit. It was merely mediocre.
 
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Fight

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
4,553
5,359
EQ2 encounters and combat felt like a spreadsheet formula. Totally predictable whether you would win the fight based completely on the mobs level compared to yours.

No tactics or strategies like EQ, you know with 98% certainty if you win or lose before you even engage. So many of the abilities where DMG + Minor Stat Reduction, and whatever the secondary component was of the ability felt completely worthless and pointless. It never felt like you were balancing your resource pools, you just face smash your keyboard till shit was dead.

The social agro, small group-pulls, and leashing were all fucking stupid as well. It all felt so artificial. EQ felt alive, dangerous, and unpredictable. EQ2 felt like a video game.

Their fundamental gameplay loops were fucked out of the gates, in the attempt to be casual and solo-friendly. The only people that don't know that or acknowledge it never played a real MMO like EQ1.
 
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Randin

Trakanon Raider
1,922
872
I can't tell you how disappointed I have been that EQ2 never really got the attention it needed to salvage itself. It was really a much better game than people gave it credit, especially there about 2-3 years after release (Hartsman years).

They should have dropped everything and addressed ability bloat and a number of other pieces that really just crushed the game. They should have halted all expansions, TLP ideas, etc. until they fixed the core game and relaunched it and then moved forward.

The present state of the game is beyond painful and it was pretty painful years ago.

I really think it was the biggest missed opportunity in the MMO genre.
There was a point back when I played--I think it was after Faydwer released--where the devs actually were going to deal with ability bloat. Naturally, players started throwing hissy fits that the devs were going to 'dumb down' the game if players didn't need to have 6-10 hotbars on screen at all times, and hit such a crescendo of bitching that the devs backed off on it. Although they did still at least consolidate some of the buffs and stuff like wizard and druid ports, which was enough to let me drop a hotbar off my screen, which was nice.
 

RobXIII

Urinal Cake Consumption King
<Gold Donor>
3,616
1,680
I had fun on the EQ2 TLE servers despite the core problems with the game. It was really funny that they just could NOT get itemization right despite doing what, 5-6 TLE servers plus the Trak event server? Raids were pretty decent, early content was nice from a lore/design point. But man you quickly went from nice hand crafted dungeons in Vanilla, to these shitty computer generated, one color 'dungeons' that clearly an unpaid intern threw together (like the Blackburrow/Vampire adventure pack crap)

To this day, the conjy epic's clicky spell number is off by like one digit; it summons the lowest possible quality fire pet lol. Come on, that should be like a 10 second fix, but stuck around for all the TLE servers. Not that it mattered for raids, because you would take a necro over conjy anyway (3x the DPS, double the utility /balance!)
 
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Rezz

Mr. Poopybutthole
4,486
3,531
I remember when the game released and the graphics looked like absolute trash (even on good rigs; it was the actual art design) and the races looked malformed/ugly as sin, that they were leaning the wrong way. At least the SoGa models made it not look like complete ass, but man. Vanguard did a much better "realistic" look that utilized hardware and wasn't just a massive exercise in faux-uncanny valley. And Vanguard didn't even look that realistic. EQ2 was just bad.

I gave it a try after a couple of years, and it seemed like it had some interesting systems. But having a bunch of abilities (SK) that were basically the same thing but on slightly different timers? Lost my interest quick. In EQ I wrote macros for lots of shit; but in EQ2 I looked at the number and went "Yeah pass." without even looking for the option. Could you put together macros that made that ability bloat bearable or was it just a dumpster fire period?
 
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Secrets

ResetEra Staff Member
1,860
1,856
I remember when the game released and the graphics looked like absolute trash (even on good rigs; it was the actual art design) and the races looked malformed/ugly as sin, that they were leaning the wrong way. At least the SoGa models made it not look like complete ass, but man. Vanguard did a much better "realistic" look that utilized hardware and wasn't just a massive exercise in faux-uncanny valley. And Vanguard didn't even look that realistic. EQ2 was just bad.

I gave it a try after a couple of years, and it seemed like it had some interesting systems. But having a bunch of abilities (SK) that were basically the same thing but on slightly different timers? Lost my interest quick. In EQ I wrote macros for lots of shit; but in EQ2 I looked at the number and went "Yeah pass." without even looking for the option. Could you put together macros that made that ability bloat bearable or was it just a dumpster fire period?
You could do 5 abilities at a time, in sequential order. It got to the point where people primarily use botting programs to play the game as they can play the game better than any human can.
 

Koushirou

Log Wizard
<Gold Donor>
4,797
12,039
Fuckin' beat me to it. I really need to get one of those prints, though... Also, goddamn, nerdy as fuck, but I'm super jealous of his damn room.
 
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