Eye-candy Tease, know what I mean?Follow

I just have to say this. First, I love EQ II! I left FFXI for it and as of yet I see no turning back. I can't get enough of the crafting system, (even though no one is really buying all my great furniture yet...lol, too soon in the game), I thoroughly enjoy not being 'required' to be in a party to progress, even though it's a lil slower. It's a fantastic experience gameplay-minded.

But, and I really mean "BUT"...I'm horrified by the graphical error with this game. I have 2 machines, one for me and one for my wife. She has the newer, yet not-so-brawny machine, and I have an older, but beefy setup. It's sad, that even with a 2+ GHz processor, 1gig of Dual Channel DDR2 memory, and a 128mb PCI Express Vid Card, that I have to have my Game Settings on "Extreme Performance", losing the majority of the rendered Eye-Candy (and sometimes I'm just a naked Rat...) and all the goodies of the game. I can't even see the spells being casted, the settings are so low. Status effects, like being on fire from a flame spell? Nope...don't see it. All I see, is my sword swinging, their sword swinging, and that's about it. Nevermind the fact that while swinging, my equip disappears because my machine can't render it fast enough.

I play any other game (aside from Doom 3) and have absolutely no problems. In fact, the Vid card in my machine is brand new (had to upgrade for EQII) and I still can't enjoy it in a "balanced" setting. My Wifes machine, 3GHz Proc/512mb DDR2/128mb PCI Exp Vid...(very very similar setup, just less ram than me and more proc power) runs it like a dream. I don't know if it's the Pentium over my AMD, or what. But it's almost sad sitting there, getting about 10% of the graphical charm on my machine.

So although I'll say "Thanks SoE" for an awesome game, I'll say "Dammit SoE!!!" for making a game that requires the top of the line PC setup to enjoy to the fullest. I'd have to fork up basically at least another $300+ to get it running better...which is just a lil sad. ><

I do know what you mean, I upgraded (bought a new machine actually) just for this (and a few other)game. With a 3Ghz processor, 1 gig of ram, and an Nvidia 6800 I can run it at the second highest setting without much problem until I get inside of Qeynos, at such time I need to dumb it down to one of the performance levels or suffer the lagging conswquences. Seems like its not been build to run on the current generation of machines, rather is setup for stuff that has yet to come out.

No kidding! I love the effects shown with Mage and Priest spells, they are rather spectacular. Not getting to see these on my machine is torture. I guess I'm going to have to look into something, as it's going to result in upgrades to fix the problem. FFXI runs on my machine like it was born on the hard drive...smooth as can be with no problems at all. It's suprising to see the load handled so differently between the games.

try this out. it might help.
http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=tech_support&message.id=3265&page=1

It's not the game, it's your comp. I have a 1.8 gigz, 512 ram, with 128 meg vid card, and I can play the game on high performance, with character texture and spell particles on MAX without hardly any lag.. till I hit a city. I have 512 more ram coming, and I expect it to run fine. But anyways, I have half what you have, and I can see everything, and my clothes don't dissapear =p.

Definately, I defrag on a regular basis (usually once a week or so, if not more). Actually defragged it over this past weekend. The system has been cleared of all the junk we don't play anymore, and cleaned up. IMO it is a pretty decent setup, but it just is surprisingly slow and unable to handle the game in a balanced setting. Quite possibly could just be that it's a POS and I need to do a overhaul (which is basically what is coming down to...not much money involved in swapping in a new MB, new Processor, and a new stick of Memory).

If anyone has any other suggestions, they're appreciated!

i am warning you dont get a GeForce FX. eq2 will not suport the fx line of video cards. when i went to comp usa to get a new video card (i had a 32bit GeForce2) i looked up the suported video cards and they spesificly said that the fx line was not suported. I went and got me a 256 GeForce4 Ti 6300. but i am using a p3 (1.9Gig) and only 768 DDR2 mem. every one i have talked to has a majior lag in south qeynos and some times in north qeynos. i personly think it is the massive amount of people in the zone and all the rendering the comp has to do.




just my 2cp

Indeed. I had to part with my five-month-old MX that I bought to play FFXI. Some lucky friend is getting a free fairly respectable vidcard...

Aye. It's getting harder and harder to rationalize my spending several hundred dollars on one single game...

You're trying to run on balanced? I can only run on High Performance settings and my specs are:

2.6 ghz Pentium 4
1 GB RAM
Radeon 9600XT 128 MB

Well, I'm running 1 gig memory, 256 mb Raedon card, 2.4 processor (yech, want to upgrade to at least 2.8 soon) and have cable internet. I run at pretty high graphic settings, but I turn some of my other settings off to do so. I want to see my dude's armor looking all speefy, and the shiney on his scales, and I like to see my party members casting. Runs pretty good, my custom setting is about the same as high performance or balanced, I'd say.

I'm not sure why you have to run it at extreme. Try tweeking with the options a little.

Ha, lol...I think ya'll misunderstood what I meant by putting the game on the 'extreme' setting. There's two extreme settings, one for Quality (which requires some SERIOUS hardware) and one for performance, which in blunt terms, dumbs down your game to basically a wireframe to play (well not really, but kinda). I'm on the Extreme "Low" setting right now (2 below Balanced) and it makes the game just look plain out Fugly. Poor rendering, no nice textures, animation is sketchy, no Flora, no nuthin! Just my toon standin there (sometimes like a rendered wireframe with no equip) and everyone else around me. It's such a ****-poor setting, and like I said, I already upgraded to a Radeon 9200SE 128mb ATi card from the previous GeForce MX series I had. So basically, I run a decent setup (2.1GHz, 512mb DDR, 128mb Radeon 9200SE Graphics).

Now personally, I kinda agree with SweetZombieJesus in saying that I'm getting rather sick on the idea that I need to upgrade further to make the game run at a balanced setting. Not that I couldn't afford it, but it's the holiday season, and it's making me consider putting the game on the shelf for a while (which I really don't want to do) because I'm basically not enjoying the fact that my gameplay is effected by not being able to tell when spells are cast and whatnot.

I don't mean to gripe about it or really whine...cause this is just want happens when new games come out. But personally, SoE didn't think too much because most of their "Balanced" settings require a pretty high-end machine, that the likes of most normal PC owners do not have. I even considered with my wife last night financing another new PC from Dell just to wipe away the hassle of rebuilding again, but we don't want to spend another $2k on a machine. Just kinda unfair that while it's great that they looked ahead to make the game worthwhile in the future, they really smacked the current PC Price/Worth ratio right in the face.

yes, just like everyone said, its a video card. I bought nvidia 5700 card last new years for $300, you can probably get one today for couple hundred dollars easy (canadian) if not less.

I can run game on performance settings + maximum resolution for character models (have not tried to max particle effects yet) and it works great and looks great. I did add few things to it until I felt that it was working fast and had all the features I wanted (like flora for example). Just take that from down up aproach, set your performance settings to high performance, and start increasing features (start from texture resolutions).

Just keep in mind that interactive features take a lot of proccessing power and only work well on high end video cards (things like interactive water and flora, reflections, weather, glare...etc). They do add to the game, but I do not see myself spending $500 on a video card that can make water to move as I run through it. In a year those video cards will be half price and in couple years you will be able to buy video card that will pull this game on maximum settings for 200-300 dollars anyway.

Bleeding edge technology always cost a load of money.