The game is 2 weeks old. What do you think so far?Follow

The game is now two weeks old. What have you manage to accomplish, and how does it stack up to games you have played in the past?

Personally, I am loving it. The quests make the game for me, and I love exploring all the new zones. Thus far I have seen all of Wailing Caves, and almost all of Fallen Gate (there is a door I can't open in FG til I finish the access quest).

Our guild hit level 5 on Friday, and is also having a blast. We will do our first Hallmark raid this week, and are already considering which guild hall to go for. Our highest member is 23rd, with several of us right behind him and 22nd.

This game has corrected so many of the flaws from previous games like FF and EQ. If had one complaint though it would be missing consentual PvP (duels). But hey, we can't have everything =)

So how about you? How far have you gotten? What is your favorite part so far?

I think I need to quit playing every second of my life... I done a /played this morning before work just to see how much time it has taken and the total was 4 days and 1 hour... in 2 weeks I played for 4 days!!!! wow.. just wow.... and all i've gotten out of that is a level 19 bard and level 16 craftsmen.

I've got you beat. I have 7 days.

Of course, when you factor out vendoring of items... I'd say I have about as much as you. Maybe 5 days.

I've got you beat. I have 7 days.

Of course, when you factor out vendoring of items... I'd say I have about as much as you. Maybe 5 days.

Dang! :p You do have me beet. I haven't done any vendoring yet. Just been on while I was playing. But wow.. 7 days! I thought I was on too much! :p

So far I am having a blast, I just hit Lvl 20 with my newly titled Illusionist this weekend. It really brings back memories of EQL and exporing new areas, I like the instanced areas, I can't imagine what Blackburrow would look like with a 100+ people in there. I like what they have done with the game, time will tell as I level up (I had a 65 chanter in EQL) how the "fun" factor of enchanter will progress. The only piece that I havent gotten into is searching out a guild to join, I am interested to see how that system works.

Selexa
20 High-Elf Illusionist
Crushbone Server

You guys are killing me with how much you have been playing...and I thought I was addicted! Anyway, loving the game, I agree it's kind of like the old days of EQ. So far I have a 17 Enchanter/6 Craftsman. Haven't got the guild thing going yet, a couple of friends and I are trying to start a new guild, but haven't had much luck recruiting enough to have the 6 people required to start one...oh well. Can't wait to go home and play!

I love it..

I'm having a lot of fun. I've tried every job so far on repeated mules (thankfully I have a friend that plays, so once they got to Freeport I gave all my mule silver to him and he gave it to my main ) but I think I like cleric best. It's just much more than your average "healer" job. I get to buff, do damage, debuff, heal, I even got a regen spell already ^_^ and Raise (revive in this game) and want to be an Inquisitor *hopefully* but the end of Thanksgiving weekend. I like the quest system a lot, get nice rewards and money, and there's always some quest I need to get done. Some I can solo and some I'll need to find a group for (still gotta kill Foulgore) but overall it's pretty neat. A nice change of pace for me, and I like the fact that there's an RP server where it's more than just a level grind.

I loved it, up until the time I partied up and died 10 times. ><

Bad day, I guess. I don't think I'm going back to BB anytime soon.

After doing a handful of quests last night, most of my debt is gone and I'm coming close on recouping my coin loss on eq repair--wholesaler quests are nice now that I can mine/forest/gather in Antonica.

It's static time for a few days in "That Other Game"(tm), so I won't be in Norrath all that much. But when I do, I hope to be makin' some weapons of the tin variety. ^^

Loving the game. (except when i join parties and they start dying and giving me debt before i even meet up with them /sigh)

Just hit 18 last night...one of my group mates found a totem off a named Gnoll in Blackburrow. He examined it and it gave him a quest that will eventually give him the ability to understand the gnoll language. i thought it was neato!

loving this game much more than ffxi.

Mixed, at best.

The game does look great. All the eye candy comes at a pretty hefty prices, system-wise but, honestly, even at maybe 80% max graphics, it's far better looking and richer than anything else out there.

Rollout and Support- exceptionally smooth, when you consider the staggering number of people who are playing at any one time. Sure, there was one big hiccup last week and there have been a couple of pretty sizable patches so all hasn't been perfect.....but I went thru many EQ I and DAoC patches and much downtime in both of those games pretty much whenever a major upgrade or feature was introduced and, particularly with Mythic, every patch seemed to cure one problem and introduce two.

Gameplay- hunting: not bad at all. I have run into a few instances where lower-con mobs were mixed in with higher cons ones, which results in very iffy hunting. Interestingly, this was mainly in the city-type hunting zones (Graveyard, Sprawl come to mind). The Commonlands is a nearly perfect progression of mob levels and has a nice variety of things of similar level to hunt so you don't get totally burned out.

Though it is abundantly clear that grouping is SoE's preferred method of hunting, they didn't ignore soloers at all. For times when you just have 15 or 20 minutes and want a game fix but don't want to join a group only to have to leave it all too shortly (a position I find myself in too often), SoE has reached a very good compromise.

Gameplay-Questing: again, pretty good, though there are niggling problems here and there. Most Quests give a very good reward versus the risk, in terms of both xp and coin (and the occasional- too occasional to me- item). EQ2 is the first game I've played where Questing is a viable alternative to mindless hacn-and-slash. The 'instanced' Quests that you get by lists that drop as loot are a particularly ingenious feature. On the bad side: Quests wherein you MUST know a non-native language in order to complete steps....guards that have no idea where an NPC is because you have to parse the name exactly correct in order to trigger a response.

Gameplay- Loot and Rewards: the xp rate is fine....possibly even a slight bit overly generous. Item loot is decent-to-good, though drops of very light armor and other caster gear are, in my and my friend's experiences, almost non-existant. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that mobs should have equal chances to drop ALL armor/equipment types >IF< they are capable of dropping metallic armors and/or fighter-type equipment. But the coin loot rate is horribly poor. No, an armadillo shouldn't drop a gold piece. But it is more than reasonable to expect a humanoid creature to drop coin loot in additional to the ever-popular Orc Meat. SoE's virtual purse strings need to be opened a bit.

Gameplay- Crafting: bad enough that it drags my whole otherwise positive opinion way, way down. Nothing needs to be this overly complicated, especially when it is part of something that is, ostensibly, fun. I've had master-level crafters in pretty much every game I've played until now....not even going to bother here. I'll do something fun in the time I have...like schedule multiple root canals or something.

All-in-all, I'm not totally engrossed by the game, certainly not to the extent that I though I would be. I'm glad all of you seem to be having a great time though....it means that SoE will make profit aplenty and support the game well, which makes us all better off in the end because it'll be a better product for us all.

Some background before I answer the posted question. I play EQLive, and have played DAoC, Asheron's Call, and Earth and Beyond. I play an average of 20-30 hrs a week dependant on my job/school/newborn/NFL and NHL schedules. I've been in large and small guilds, raiding and family guilds. I did not play beta. I scoured and hunted the websites looking for fair and unbiased reports from the beta and waited impatiently (and with some trepidation that my expectations would far exceed the reality).

All in all I think SOE did a good job. The roll out was well done with only a few hiccups and the patches have been reasonable thus far.

The two cities are very different in appearance and atmosphere but both are stunning in their own way. I highly recommend doing many of the lvl 6-10 quests that involve searching for folks in various zones. You quickly become familiar with the many city zones and often get decent goodies as a result. As an example, I was able to do various quests in Freeport that netted me several sp, four seperate bags, and several armor pieces. Well worth my time and I got to know my new city as well.

The newbie zones are crowded, but that's to be expected so soon after rollout. The mobs are numerous, achievable quests abound. It is extremely easy to solo to 12, after that it slows down and you have to start looking for groups.

The Commonlands are VAST. It feels as if you are in the frontiers of civilization. There is soooo much to see in this zone. If you go out and just explore, you can spend a great deal of time doing so. As you explore you come across many different "minizones" with each having a truly unique name and it's own sort of ecology/mobs. There are several different hidden in plain sight minizones that I've placed on my "places to go, mobs to slay" list. I haven't taken the griffen ride yet, I'm enjoying the running around with no instant transportation. Reminds of the pre Planes days in EQLive, where making the run from Freeport to Qeynos was an achievement in and of itself, particularly if you couldn't invis. Fun, fun, fun.

I came into the game with the expectation of playing a human or barbarian Dirge. I've played each of the Archetypes to about 12 now. My new main is a Ratonga Cleric (soon to be an Inquisitor). I enjoy playing a cleric in EQ2, I couldn't stand it in EQLive. The group window and targeting system minimize the number of tgt switches you have to make. Keep it on the MT to assist, cast offensive spells on MT's tgt, and to heal the MT. I can see which of my fellow adventurers are infected with disease or some sort of debuff and cure it before the group even has time to ask/tell me about it. The group window and targeting system allow you to be a very responsive cleric.

Many people are dissatisfied with the crafting system. I enjoy it a great deal. I like the crafter's mark on each item I make. I like the varying quality of goods and the unique abilities that go with that. That being said there are some issues that should be addressed in the crafting. Resources in the Tier One zones are often hard to come by due to the sheer number of folks harvesting. Respawn times were decreased to meet demand, but it still pretty difficult to fulfill the wholesaler collect resources quests in Tier one zones as compared to Tier two zones. To remedy this, they should increase the number of resources available in the Tier one zones for a while (at least until the newbie zones thin out some). This would allow for the various harvesting skills to keep pace with your adventuring xp advancement. This becomes an issue as well because as soon as you hit level 10 in your adventuring class all your wholesaler collect tasks are now from the Tier two zones, but you may not have the required level in whatever harvesting skill is involved. Another way to remedy this is to qeue the wholesaler's collection quests off of the skill levels vice your adventurer level.

I only really have two other gripes about EQ2. The maps that you can key up are sparse. I would like to be able to upload or create my own maps. I would also like to be able to edit or annotate things on my map (perhaps notes attached to a "thumbtack"). I would also like to see some changes to the utility of the macros. I would love to be able to trigger abilities or cast spells with a macro. For example:

/g %t is trapped in Arcane Bindings (root)
/cast 1

I realize that the macros in EQ2 were intentionally designed to not do that. It was a wonderful thing in EQLive, it allowed my group to know what spells I was casting at which target. They knew if a mob was DoTted and slowed, debuffed, etc. I understand that both gripes are benefits we had in EQLive and that this is not EQLive. Both of those two gameplay abilities were immensely useful to me and, as a result, my part as well.

I've enjoyed playing this game a great deal. I'm not trying to power my way through the game, I'm taking my time and going at my own pace. The quests are plentiful and well thought out (for the most part). The gameplay, so far, has been excellent. The storylines and lore are immersive. The graphics are beautiful and can be scaled up or down as needed to suit many different machines. I was relieved to see that Sony has released an excellent game. They have be pretty responsive to /bugs and customer service issues. I can only hope that this continues to be the case. I'm eager and curious to see what esle this gameworld has to offer.


Shaal-Ratonga Cleric/Scholar
Nektulos server
Skathe-Human Bard
Nektulos server