An extremely detailed preview of EQ2

adumir · Post by **adumir** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 1:54 pm

Wow, um, THANK YOU for this link.

After reading that lowdown of EQ2's systems any lingering desire I had to perhaps purchase the game has evaporated. At least now I won't have to wonder what I'm missing when I purchase WoW..

YellowKing · Post by **YellowKing** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 2:40 pm

Much of this preview complains about things that are strictly limited to beta and/or have already been corrected. I posted some rebuttal at Console Gold under Raven's identical thread.

adumir · Post by **adumir** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 3:14 pm

Woo! Counterpoint! Thanks!
I'll head over there. Maybe I'll flip-flop

tals · Post by **tals** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 3:41 pm

YellowKing wrote:Much of this preview complains about things that are strictly limited to beta and/or have already been corrected. I posted some rebuttal at Console Gold under Raven's identical thread.

Can we have a linky please?

Tals

YellowKing · Post by **YellowKing** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 3:52 pm

http://www.consolegold.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1948

Also, if anybody has any specific issues they're concerned about from that druids grove review that they want me to address, let me know. I've done a LOT of research on the game, read the forums all the time, and play the beta nightly so I might be able to shed some light on it. That's not to say I disagree with everything the reviewer said, but I hate to see people be discouraged from the game based on faulty information.

wire · Post by **wire** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 1:58 am

One question...which is a deal breaker for me.

Do you need a book next to your keyboard so you have something to do while you regenerate health or mana points?

YellowKing · Post by **YellowKing** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 10:03 am

Do you need a book next to your keyboard so you have something to do while you regenerate health or mana points?

No, they've really worked on reducing the downtime from EQ1. Health and mana regenerates much quicker now, and it scales as you level. So for instance, you will regenerate from no mana to full mana at 50 in the same time you did at 10.

In addition, food and water now serve as health/mana regeneration buffs. The higher quality of food and water you have, the faster you can regen.

That's not to say that there's no downtime, but worst case scenario (meaning no buffs to help regen, only basic food/water) you're still only looking at around a minute and a half, two minutes tops to regen from empty.

Austin · Post by **Austin** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 10:33 am

YellowKing wrote:
Do you need a book next to your keyboard so you have something to do while you regenerate health or mana points?
No, they've really worked on reducing the downtime from EQ1. Health and mana regenerates much quicker now, and it scales as you level. So for instance, you will regenerate from no mana to full mana at 50 in the same time you did at 10.

In addition, food and water now serve as health/mana regeneration buffs. The higher quality of food and water you have, the faster you can regen.

That's not to say that there's no downtime, but worst case scenario (meaning no buffs to help regen, only basic food/water) you're still only looking at around a minute and a half, two minutes tops to regen from empty.

2 minute is about double what I had heard a while back. If they extend it a little more and a little more than we could be back to square one. I was really looking forward to 1 minute tops. I suppose you won't be regening from 0 all that often though. Still watching this one.

YellowKing · Post by **YellowKing** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 11:10 am

2 minutes was just a guess. I think the highest figure I'd heard mentioned specifically was a minute and a half.

Again though, it's not often you're going to be regenning from 0 health/power with no food/water or no buffs.

neofit · Post by **neofit** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 12:58 pm

YellowKing wrote:2 minutes was just a guess. I think the highest figure I'd heard mentioned specifically was a minute and a half.

Heh, 2 minutes is an awfully long time when just sitting on your butt watching the kettle. Actually the last time I quit EQ was when my new 30ish barbarian beastlord started spending about the same 2 minutes we are talking about here to regen after *every* fight that would bring him a tad of exp. And this time I left for good.

The more things I read now that the NDA is lifted the more I feel that EQ2 has still a lot of the things I ended up hating in EQ. Not that as an European I can choose WoW instead, I am not planning to cancel my EQ2 pre-order at amazon, yet I feel more and more disenchanted as to the game mid to long-term appeal. As long as I manage to have a great newbie experience (it usually is in every game) worth the price & shipping during the free month, I don't mind.

Now I have a lot of worries about crafting. I am getting older, I know I can lock onto a monster and repeatedly hit it using a couple of keys in any game. I need to have an interesting crafting system at least as a backup when resting from all the violence, if not as a main trade. Horizon was near perfect in this area until Tier III AFAIC.

I read a few very worrying things in Lark's post at druidgrove's. It seems that there are not that many crafting quests. A pure crafter can't sustain his trade by gathering materials. Recipes are dropping off monsters, while I imagined from what I have read on the official site that they would be available at the shop I'd link my character to. Limited (allegedly) storage options. The need to spend your one's limited online time to sell his wares instead of an offline trading system which is now pretty much standard in every game.

I don't know how much of this is true and what will change at release, these are rather subjective issues, but with SOE one never knows if a sucky thing isn't an actual game feature. I wonder if crafting feels more of a grind than adventuring, how many items does one have to craft to gain a level, does a crafter gain exp/levels at the same rate as an adventurer. I also wonder what use can crafted items have, allegedly they are less useful than dropped items, but what are SOE's plans in this matter three weeks before release? And is there any kind of variety in crafted items, like the ability to customize a sword's appearance like in Horizons (or the shields I was able to customize in beta and the first week)?

Also, I think I read somewhere about inventory sharing, a feature to let characters on the same account share their inventories, thus removing the tedium of having to relog and use another player just to exchange items between one's own toons. Is it in, and was it even planned?