Anybody on dial-up?Follow

I've been playing EQ1 and EQ2 on 56K dial-up for close to 2 years. It works fine; granted, major patches take a couple of hours to download (usually 4 hours at most...I don't know what's up with that 85 hour download thing), and sometimes you get a little lag, but almost never is it too bad to play. (Major patches, by the way, happen maybe once a month...just download while you're asleep or out of the house.) EQ2 has this great feature where if one zone gets full, another instance of the same zone is opened. For example, if you try to zone into Antonica, you may be given the option of Antonica 1 or 2, each of which has 60-100 players in it. This is a godsend for dial-up people, because it makes zones less crowded and less laggy. :)

For some reason it takes longer to d/l the Trial than it does just the normal patches when you first install the game. Your best bet is yes...just go buy the game, or else you'll be old and grey by the time Trial d/ls. 103 hours? Yikes! It might also be longer because more people are D/Ling it at the same time to try it...is my guess.

I'm not on Dialup but Bulgarian cable modem has bandwidth limiters for any traffic out of the country, so its like dialup with absolute max 64Kbps but realistic 40Kbps is more the norm. Thus I am pretty close to your dialup. I needed around 50 hours to download the updates. The good news is you can close the download and restart on just the file it was working on. After you've downloaded every major patch you then have option to download a few hundred megs of sound files too, those are under options.

The store bought CD still needs downloads; it was minted last year and a lot has changed since then. The plus side is its worth it, especially if dialup isn't paid by the minute like it is here (cost in Sofia is around $0.07/5 minute impulse nights and 3 minute impulse days, so every gamer goes cable modem or lan (same speed here) for about $20 USD for limitless time and 32 Kbps to 64Kbps nominal "max" speed. I guess from the perspective of other players, it makes botters expensive here. Wages small, but telecomm fee outrageous. I use my fingers the old fashioned way, so don't care; not a botter.

D/L for a few days, but recommend you do it only late at night for somewhat faster throughput if your ISP is congested days. Theres a few minutes preamble up front while it checks your files against a master list, then starts on the last file you didnt finish and moves forward. Start now and you'll be live by the weekend. Go ahead and buy the game; its worth it, assuming you can afford the monthly fees in the first place.

Good luck!

glennushka@mail.bg

Thanks all. I did go buy the DVD last night -- update says about 25 hours -- half way done now.

I have found people reporting 100+ hour downloads for the trail on other forums so I guess that's just the way it is for those of us who choose to live off the main line.