…there are gnome and halfling vendors in tiny, little tents. As an ogre I feel like the need to crouch to be able to see them and speak with them. It feels like a city that is giving home to many different races and each one of the dwellers is involved into something. It again reminds me the “City of Doors”. The melting pot of races and stories. You can go speak with the oddest NPCs. There are millions of quests and stories and there are also dialogues that you can hear that aren’t just attached to functional quests. There are bells you can ring near the docks to travel quickly between the zones and you can find trap doors that lead to the sewers that again can work as a transition from zone to zone and have odd, steampunk machineries that seem to have no coherent use (I hope they have one and that i’ll be able to discover it during my journey). These are all “hints” of a whole different approach to the genre and an attempt to create a richer virtual world.

Again I feel immersed. That immersion that is too often dismissed and overlooked. I love how the slums in Freeport are made with tiny alleys and passages and an overall dirty, worn look. There are odd writings everywhere on the walls, like magic formulas or graffiti. I went looking to join a crafting guild to dig out that part of the game and I noticed a cat stretching in the nearby corner. It got my attention because he was named Mr. Buttons instead of the generic “a cat”. I thought maybe it had a dialogue or something, so I right clicked on it to see if it had some options available and while doing this I saw him suddenly shifting as if he was pointing something. I turned around and I saw that there was in fact a rat just near the corner. I thought it was just a coincidence but then, after a few more seconds, this cat zooms past the corner and begins to chase the fleeing rat all around the place. I found this funny and I followed the cat around. The movements/animations are always a bit jerky but it was fun seeing the two running like crazy all over the place. Just as I was ready to go back to my chores I see the cat passing near a dog and the dog starting to chase the cat! Not long after that episode and I pass again by the same place and I see the “chef” chasing a small, black pig that was quietly waggling about just a minute before: “Here little piglet, I have piggy treats…”

Are these little things that enhance the immersion and move the game slightly away from the sole obsession of exp points, levels and mobs to kill. The NPCs have many emotes and even if they usually still just stand around doing nothing as in other games, they also use those emote animations during the dialogues. This helps to give them some more life. I have to say that, contrarily to my previous comments, the voices can help a lot. They give each NPC more variance and more personality. Again all these are little steps to to improve the immersion. You can run around and have them call you out. It feels more like a believable place than just the artificiality of strictly functional purposes.

I still need to figure out this crafting thing. I totally forgot about getting the quest on the newbie island so I’m a bit at loss. The NPCs do a very poor work at explaining you what you are supposed to do. I understood I need to have access to workshops but they ask me to join their “society” without giving me elements to understand how I’m supposed to make this choice or what are the alternatives. After you join one you have access to a location where there are crafting tools and you get some sort of beginner quest that tells you to gather some materials. But again there’s little to no guidance and, as a brand new player with zero experience, I have no clue what I’m looking forward to accomplish that duty. Some work to streamline the approach would be appreciated.

Just a little remark on the zone design of Freeport: I wish it had the z-axis more developed instead of feeling too “horizontal” and flat. I guess it would make the performance of the game even worst but it’s still something I think would improve significantly the feeling of a big, complex town.

Not a game, but a journey. It isn’t perfect and still far, far away from that goal. But the little differences and qualities it is offering me are unique.

(more screenies)

On Q23 I opened a flame/rant thread to harshly criticize some carelessness in the art of the game. Here I’m going to add a few screenshots that instead show some pretty corners of the world, demonstrating that, after all, there’s very good art in the game.

As I already said the game is constantly amazing and deluding me, depending on where I happen to look. The environments, in particular indoors, usually look much better than the average quality of the monsters and characters. Freeport (the “evil” city) looks rather good and I have to say that the graphic style is consistent in this case. During my visit to the city I felt a bit like in Morrowind and a bit like exploring the “City of Doors” in Torment. I really like a darker fantasy settings with a more realistic look than the same recycled and overworked fantasy stereotypes. Again I happen to like exactly the part where the game slightly differs from the trend.

I was positively impressed by the step forward for the “housing” over the shantytowns of SWG. Finally the players’ houses are realistically *in* the city instead of scattered around it. I think in EQ2 the guilds can buy their houses within the city, as if they were consistent part of it. You can walk around the roads and find doors leading to places you can rent. Of course the idea is still severely limited because I suppose multiple guilds can buy the same house since it’s mostly about a door working as a portal on a private instance. But the idea is already a step forward and has a lot of potential. Owning a real shared space part of game world and without relying on dedicated zones or instances would be really great and I believe not too unrealistic to implement.

Since I’m mixing my impressions on the exploration of the city with the comments on the graphic I’ll have to say that while I loved walking around and exploring, the game still doesn’t really reward this experience. It’s again just a glimmer on what could be possible if the game didn’t completely focus on one pattern (the combat). It’s interesting to explore the zones because they are more variegate compared to WoW, where the geography is much more linear, with smoother transitions (which is both a advantage and a disadvantage), but then there’s very little to “discover”. The game is still strongly game-y and you will just find more quest givers, vendors and random NPCs, without other interesting elements that could make the game more rich and immersive. This make the locations still look pretty and fun to explore, but without really rewarding this exploration since there’s not much to find. I think the game could really use more varying content added that isn’t just about whacking monsters and that could be more tied to the exploration and interaction. The city has so much potential in the content it could offer but then it reveals to be rather “empty” and repetitive. I also didn’t find many interesting buildings. Beside some very small and recycled rooms scattered around and a few other exceptions, the city is still mostly about alleys and nooks that after a while can feel a bit redundant.

These comments where mostly about the environments. The graphic engine relies *heavily* on bumpmapping and specular lights on nearly all the surfaces. I have to say that the effects really look very good and the world feels much more immersive because of this. I was truly sceptical before trying the game because I never liked the display of technical features without a justification, but I liked a lot the result. The biggest problem is that these features become a requirement to see the game as it was supposed to be and without them it looks much worse and flat.

The same about the graphic of the characters. The quality fluctuates sharply also because there are too many different settings and it’s not hard to see things looking plain wrong or clashing together. Again it’s all about highs and lows, that when it comes to the characters are even more prominent. There will be things you’ll love and things you’ll hate. I definitely like the more realistic, “rugged” look of some pieces of armors and weapons but it’s always moving on a really weak balance between something looking impressive and something looking totally wrong. The “hate” about the characters is also because the models often aren’t as realistic as the equipment they wear and have a really awful “Barbie” plastic feeling, with really odd skin tones and modeling. And here the SOGA models just make this situation much, much worse (I hate them way more than the default graphic).

Oddly enough the fancier the creature the better the model looks, frogloks in particular (the brass effect is sooo pretty, the screenshot doesn’t do it justice). But then are the animations to look really bad and inappropriate with those races (you really don’t want to see a froglok hopping around, it’s awful).

The overall impression about the character models and equipment is that the mixed quality makes the art feel approximate and imprecise. Rough. You can see things that are truly awful and overall you can feel a general lack of polish, but then the style can also grow on you if you tolerate the “lows” and appreciate the efforts the artists made to draw the most out of the technology they have available. I hope the game will improve on this front (polish, care and detail) but I have to admit that SOE never shined and I don’t expect a different trend anytime soon.

I also wished they moved away from the standard fantasy settings or the exoticism of the “arabian nights” and toward something more harsh, again closer to “Planescape” and the darker fantasy settings that have always been my passion and that would be absolutely more appropriate to make the most out of the engine they have. It would also mark another element of difference from WoW, which would be just good and again appealing to that part of the public that could enjoy something going in a completely different direction.

(more screenies)

The box
I bought the boxed version of “Desert of Flames”, the first expansion. It includes the expansion and the original game but not the two mini-packs that were released along the year and that you can only buy (and download) separately. The game comes in two dvds. I found this quite surprising since the installed client only takes around 4.6Gb on the hard disk, uncompressed. That would be more than enough to fit on a single dvd and I cannot understand why they decided to use two instead. I even tried to browse them manually but they contain just the game and a DirectX installer. This is also disappointing because the dvds don’t even include the optional voice packs and that’s another 800+Mb to downlad that could have been easily avoided. It really makes no sense.

In the box there’s also a map of the isle added in the expansion. This reminds me how much I’d love more “offline” content. It’s an aspect that this genre never considers but I think there could be a good potential. Instead of manuals that noone reads and that become obsolete after one month, I would really love to see some worthwhile content that I can dig when I shut down the pc and want to pass some time in a different way. It would be a great idea to add lore books and atlas with the boxed games. We are slowly moving toward the digital download and this material could easily be converted in pdf, but I think it would really add a significant value to the boxed game when you can obtain “books” you can read, maps and other (useful) “gadgets” that aren’t strictly tied to the electronic material. Instead of outsourcing this work to external compaines this should be something directly connected and parallel to the game development. I think everyone would simply love to have lore books to read or atlas books with professional, detailed maps for all the zones.

I don’t even think this should replace the strategy guides as a “walkthrough”. These lore books and atlas should just provide a “roleplay insight” on the game. Describing the zones, the stories. But not directly explaining the quests, items etc… They would plug right between the layer of the actual game and the fictional one, adding depth to both and functioning as a bridge between one and the other. Then this idea could also be expanded to include letters and articles from the development team, design ideas, explanations and so on. I’d so love this. It would be a huge incentive to the box sales and the material could be then also be offered separately, to get then bundled and released with the next expansion.

User Interface
As I already wrote I liked the UI and didn’t feel disappointed about it. But then there are also a number of little quirks and limitations that could use some work. You can detach and create new chat boxes and you can customize the channels, fonts, toggle visibility and so on, but the control isn’t complete and it leaves you wishing for more. These are some examples I could remember about the chat box:
* The possibility to move the scroll bar on the right side of the window so that if the chat box is near the right of the screen the scroll bar wouldn’t get in the way.
* Each new chat window you open also retains the “input” box at the bottom where you can type. If for example you use a chat box just to monitor the combat the input box will take space that isn’t really needed. So an option to turn it off would be useful.
* The possibility to set after how much time the fade in/out effect of the chat box triggers when the chat box has been inactive for a while.
* Another limitation that I find in every game and that I cannot understand is about filtering the combat messages that do not involve your charater. It would make sense, but this is an option missing in every game. You can filter the attacks/spells of enemies or friends, but you cannot filter things that are about YOU. You can filter for example ALL enemy spells or ALL friendly spells, but you cannot tell the UI to just show spells that are being casted ON YOU, or on your target. So it’s basically impossible to set the game so that you can see what matters to you without also having to deal with extra spam coming from all that happens around you. I don’t care, for example, if “x” is healing “y”. But I would like to see a message if “x” is healing ME. Or if it is launching a fireball at me without also getting messages for all the fireballs that he throws around. I can understand that this probably is hard to implement on the server (since it seems that it just binds together default chat channels, without sending dynamic, custom messages) but this could be easily doable through the client.
* An option to change the size of the fonts in the chat bubbles (that also flicker awkwardly on the screen in some cases where who speaks is behind you).

Another part that could use some improvements is the hotbar:
* The icons are quite ugly and uninspired, lacking an actual good and consistent style that could be also appropriate for the setting. They look too generic.
* What bugs me the most is that the “fade” effect on the icon when you finished to cast a spell and are waiting for the recast time is too dark. It’s really hard to distinguish at a glance the status of the recast timer.
* I noticed that I CAN queue spells but there’s no apparent way to see what I have queued or if there’s something queued. WoW in the same situation highlights the borders of the icon, so you can see clearly if an action is still waiting to be triggered or if you aren’t issuing any particular command. EQ2 could also use something along those lines, with graphical marks on the hotbars to clearly show queued spells and styles.
* A good idea that the (any) game could borrow from Ultima or Shadowbane is the possibility to drag an icon and drop it anywhere on screen. Bypassing the hotbars. This would be a really nifty functionality that I’m sure many players would appreciate.
* I had problems tracking the active effects on my target during combat. I play a “defiler” and my class has some debuffs and DOTs. Similarly to WoW I can see the active effects in the target window but all my debuffs look EXACTLY the same. They are all dark green on red and it’s basically impossible to distinguish one tiny icon from the other. This is a part that could use some work. The active effects that are frequently used together should be always easily recognizeable one from the other so that I can see at a glance which effect I need to recast. It would be a good design principle that would help to keep the game playable instead of confusing. Trying to recognize one icon from the other isn’t all that “fun” and it shouldn’t be an actual mechanic of the combat. It’s just the UI getting in the way and doing its duty poorly.
* Add the name of the zone the character is currently exploring directly on screen, clearly visible instead of having to bring up the map window. It could be easily bundled with the compass, for example.

By the way, why the introduction movie is so demanding on the hardware? It stutters when I watch it and I can see the CPU usage to the max. It’s quite odd since it’s just a movie and considering I have a rather good CPU. And since I’m going after the detail: why the “credits” page shows a point of view of the scene stuck inside a tree? It wasn’t possible to choose a better point? Odd.

Sound and music
Well, I don’t really have much to say. The quality is average, not too bad, not amazing. The musics remind me of the first EverQuest and while they aren’t anything amazing they still fit nicely. The sound system also gives you lots of options as it was for the graphic engine. You cannot tweak the volume of each sound type separately but there are insteresting options like the possibility to add varying pitch to the sounds or a slider that regulates how much variance you want (at the expense of more memory/cpu cycles). You can set the music to loop or play only once, as when you enter a new zone. It would be nice to even flag various locations in a zone to trigger short sound pieces but the options are satisfying enough anyway.

The sound quality (meaning the selection of the sounds, not the technical quality) is varying as for the graphic. Sometimes there are nice environmental sounds that bring some places to life, I was also positively surprised by the sounds of the steps. In other games there’s only one sound repeated over and over that everyone finishes to disable because it is too repetitive and annoying. In EQ2 the steps change depending where you walk. There are different sounds for the sand, wood, stone, grass etc… And you also hear different sounds if for example you walk on a road instead of the grass nearby. This shows a care rare in this game.

Then, in other cases, the sounds are quite dull and monotonous, in particular during the combat. I dislike how the spells sound as I dislike how they look (the particle effects indigestion). Sometimes it seems like hearing a bunch of dissonant gongs, bells or odd sci-fi effects that I didn’t find appropriate. As I said the environmental sounds can be nice, the game can have lots of atmosphere but in some of the case it’s like it is not cooperating.

The NPCs are supposed to have voices. I say “supposed” because only a minimal part of them seem to have voices. I’m still finishing to download the optional voice packs but I have the suspect that the situation won’t improve too much. I was expecting 100% of the text to be also dubbed but now I doubt it is. The voices, as the rest of the game, are of a varying quality and the game does a very, very bad work to reproduce the voices of the fantasy races like ogres and trolls. It really feels like a bad b-movie. The voices can enhance a lot the game and I believe they could have a lot of potential if used in the right way (along my idea to shift back the focus on the real “story”), but in EQ2 this potential isn’t used. The voices add very little to the game and you don’t lose much if you don’t have them. There’s little to no acting and in some cases you wish to not have heard the dub. Finding a voice that you would consider appropriate for the character that is speaking is more like an exception than a rule, sadly.

—
Hmm, other notes? I had some problems redefining the controls. I could set the keyboard and mouse options as I liked (and again there are many options available) but the game just didn’t seem to consider what I set. It kept using the default bindings completely bypassing my configuration. I actually managed to solve the problem by deleting all the .ini file in the main directory but it was quite odd since I just installed and run the game right away (the problem could have been because I created the first character, then quickly deleted it and recreated with the same name).

I’m currently level 9. I have the combat experience turned off because I’m outlevelling content that I want to see and there’s a bazillion of quests everywhere that I WANT to do. Most of the last level not only I didn’t receive exp from the combat, but I also stopped questing and I STILL dinged a level just by running around and discovering new places (which also gives you some exp). So I’m still just running around gaping at the places. As I said the quality of the art is varying, but I’m finding the game also quite satisfying to explore. The world is not contiguous as in WoW and this leads to a “double-face” result. From a side the exploration is frustrated because you bump into invisible walls and because it’s really hard to figure out how the game world is connected together, from the other the smaller zones allow for more variance between the various places. I still have seen very little about the game so I don’t know how it will shape out throughout all the zones and levels, but for now it was quite interesting (and again the highs and lows). As I wrote in the previous comments this game feels more labyrinthine compared to WoW but this isn’t a bad decision since, from what I’ve seen, EQ2’s engine renders big, open spaces much, much worse than WoW. So it’s actually good that it focuses on what it does better. I’m quite worried because there’s always the engine as a limit to what the zones can offer. Too much complexity and the game would really become totally unplayable.

I dread what they can do with the upcoming expansions. I don’t really want to run after the game continuously trying to upgrade the hardware to keep its pace. EQ2’s engine is already so heavy that it won’t run with maximized options even in ten years. I’m not joking since the requirements can rise exponentially as you rended more high detail characters instead of relying HEAVILY on a variable the Level Of Detail. I know that SOE built the engine to support the game in the longer term, but the problem here is that, while the games won’t run fluid still for a long while, its graphic quality is already varying with highs and lows and I don’t think it will remain convincing for long. It seems like putting the cart ahead of the horses. EQ2 isn’t developed for the current generation, but it may suck for the next one. It’s not a really promising future if you put things in this perspective…

Hmm… Overall I have to admit I’m having fun and enjoying my time. The game still looks really rich and filled with new things to discover. I know *exactly* where its appeal is and why it was able to capture it, but the truth is that EQ2 isn’t really using this potential. It’s just hinting to it. I would hope for Vanguard but then I’m even MUCH more skeptical toward it. What I’d like to see, and that I’m sure I’ll be deluded still for many, many years, is a “simulation”. Something closer to an enriching world where you really can feel immersed. I miss this aspect so much and I still STRONGLY believe it’s something possible to achieve in this genre and worthwhile pursuing. I’m sure that a game moving in that direction instead of just game-y, artificial gameplay would be hugely successful and could even go to notch WoW’s predominance (but then SOE seems more interested to leech than actually compete, heh..). I’m having so much fun in EQ2 right now because it feels richer and more varied, because I’m discovering things while the combat is still only one of the aspects.

I know that these feelings won’t last forever and that soon the discovery will come short and what will be left will be the endless monster bashing along with some functional quests. But EQ2 let a glimpse of an undisclosed potential. Even that tiny glimpse is giving me so much fun. If I’m liking EQ2 IS NOT because it’s at 99% traced over WoW. But for that 1% that feels different. But SOE is too blind to see that.

I’m not looking for another time sink or another facy whack-a-mole. I’m looking for a “world” where I can really be part of and that isn’t restricted to an evolved combat game. I’d like to see an enriching experience that gains more life and breadth, that is able to offer more interests than just one. Overinflated and stretched.

I still love mmorpgs. But I love them for what they aren’t already.

This is the comments I wrote on QT3 that summarize at best my point of view on the game. The truth is at the end :)

—
I’m playing right now. I just started two days ago for the first time and I never saw the game before.

I have to say that the overall graphic is much better than how I expected. There are many aspects I don’t like (animations, particle effect indigestion, very bad clipping) but the game has plenty of jaw-dropping moments. It makes you go “OH WOW!”.

And then it is also hugely varying. Some of the art is gorgeous, some even below the amateur level. Overall, again, I’m positively surprised but the game has those sharp highs and lows.

The first and foremost problem is that to enjoy the prettiness at its best you need a computer that doesn’t exists yet. EQ2 engine is highly demanding.

The PvE encounters themselves are much more polished and feel so much better in WoW. The respawn rates in EQ2 are insanely fast and you cannot move anywhere without the mobs popping on top of you midfight without even a fade effect. They run around and chase with jerky movements and don’t look too good while in combat, it’s also not rare that the animation breaks and the mob stands there dead but without an actual dead animation. During combat even *a bear* will hit you with FRIGGIN particle effects, and the spell effects always look terribly “inflated” besides the hugely varying quality.

WoW is smoother, polished. It feels better also thanks to the fluidity of the engine and the movements/animations/attacks of the mobs. EQ2 here feels directly rougher and approximate.

The design of the zones is another element of difference. WoW is bigger, with open spaces and a rather complex and detailed world design. Each zone is unique with its own interesting corners and Points Of Interest. EQ2 is more “compressed”, sometimes it feels closer to Guild Wars. The world design is much less polished. The open zones may look horrible. I’ve been in the Commonlands that would be subpar even compared to DAoC. You just have a barren zone surrounded by mountains (the typical “bowl” type of zone) with two ground textures (desert and grass) and rocks scattered around randomly. It completely lacks any world design. There are groups of mobs standing around without any sense. These spawn points look silly because you see clusters of different mobs types as if you walked around a showroom. Yes, the beetles are amazing to see at closer range with the specular lights and everything, but the zone looks awful overall and the superiority of WoW on the zone design is evident.

In general I’d say that EQ2 does a good work with structures and indoor/city/slums locations, while WoW is far superior with the zone design (ground textures, zone layout and planning, vegetation etc..)

I really find hard to say if I’m liking it or not. There are some parts I absolutely love. Some parts that are awful. As I play I have moments of amazement and moments of delusion.

Overall EQ2 feels more “compressed” and rich compared to WoW. As you start the game you are sort of overwhelmed. WoW’s newbie experience is MUCH more directed and with smaller steps. EQ2 happens all at once. In quick repetition.

This may seem an advantage for WoW, but it’s not. EQ2 is really capable of sucking you inside the monitor from the first minute and not letting you out anymore. I found it way more addicting. I loved to discover the game and all its various systems. WoW feels smaller while bigger. EQ2 feels bigger while smaller.

WoW has more “breadth”. Less elements but planned much better, to have a clear and direct role in the game. EQ2 is much more confused, crowded and rich. This means that a single element in WoW can be much better than EQ2. Much better designed and presented. EQ2 is rougher, imprecise, approximate, garbled. This for game design, graphic and presentation. But this also makes it feel richer. It’s immersive in a totally different way from WoW. But I have to admit it works.

The truth:

Right now EQ2 isn’t there as an heritage of EQ Classic. It’s instead strategically put as a gate for the new players that arrived with WoW, those who couldn’t metabolize the endgame content and are now looking for a product that is similar, yet different. EQ2 is a trapdoor on WoW. An exit point. It’s not a competitor for WoW. EQ2 is instead a parasite. It draws life from WoW and is slowly shaping up as a really nice and fun game.

I’d say that I could start writing and stop only after a week. I have a text file filled with notes and already started to write some comments on Q23 forums. There’s so much to say, about multiple aspects and I don’t really want to start writing endless walls of text that noone would even attempt to read. So my first problem is how I can organize all this in something that makes sense and isn’t too long. I think it’s impossible, I don’t even know where to start.

In general I could say that the game is filled with sharp highs and lows, this is a constant throughout the game. I was constantly amazed and deluded and this didn’t help when it came to decide if I like or hate this game. I still wouldn’t be able to answer this question.

This is the first time I play the game. I only saw the screenshots till now and always dismissed the game for plenty of good reasons that I won’t explain now. The reason why I decided to buy the game is after the announce of the servers consolidation and the dedication that Scott Hartsman is showing toward the game. I already had a first (one-side, as always) confrontation with him where I was explaining some of my reasons to doubt about the overall scheme of the game. It’s the same theme we discussed during the Christmas holidays, about a model that seems more to damage and slowly kill these games instead of disclosing their potential. The decision to consolidate the servers, even if the game was gaining subscription, was quite surprising and, for me, a clear sign that things were going in a different direction. It was a really smart move that I didn’t expected from a company that just seem to make more and more glaring mistakes, also largely anticipated.

So I was intrigued and decided to follow the game a bit more closely to see where it could lead. Starting in a new mmorpg is always exciting and it’s probably the best moment in any game. If I had found the time to write this during the first day I think you would have read much more optimistic and positive impressions. Today I’m much more cautious and dubious.

As I launched the game and quickly adjusted the options I went “WHOA!”. At the first impact the game looks really, really pretty. I was surprised because I expected to hate the graphic style of EQ2 to the point that I was worried that I wouldn’t have suffered it at all. Instead the newbie island where you arrive after the character creation gave me a really good and positive impression. The environment comes to life. The colors are vibrant, there are butterflies flying around, some good environmental sounds with the birds chirping and a huge tower standing out at the center. The first impression is always very important and EQ2 outperformed my expectations.

I think I passed the first three real hours toying with the options and I’m not joking. You can really manipulate the game client the way you like and you can finetune everything. It takes a lot of time to experiment with the options and sliders and I was never completely satisfied with my choices. It’s actually quite hard to find a satisfying balance between the performance and quality since the game relies HEAVILY on its advanced features. You could turn off the specular lights, but that would remove the reflective effects that make the crabs on the beach look so amazing. You could move the quality of the particle effects from “high” to “medium” but that would completely remove most of the spell effects. And so on. These compromises are never easy because the biggest strength of the game is in the support of those advanced effects. All the surfaces in the game are bumpmapped and often reflective to the light. Removing these effects would be like dumbing down the whole thing since all the textures in the game were planned to look good with these effects activated and not so pretty without them.

The newbie island works like a tutorial and it’s not badly planned. There are a bunch of NPCs that will explain you all the different parts of the game, from the skills and spells to the death systemd, the Heroic Opportunities, the inventory and so on. What I didn’t like is the artificiality of the whole thing. As you enter the game the environment is truly immersive as I described, but then all the NPCs will start to speak directly about the keys you are supposed to press, the interface, the graphic marks on screen and so on. It’s all terribly functional and faked that it sharply brings you back to the reality of the “game”. The immersivity pretty much ends there and the rest of the game steers sharply toward a much more game-y direction.

The UI is quite good and offers an high degree of customization. I found it rather polished and it’s a solid point of the game. The ugliest aspect is about the icons of the spells and skills but overall it made a good impression on me. It doesn’t reach the quality and design in WoW but it is much more customizable out of the box. There are some default options that I really hate, like completely inappropriate huge blue arrows sticking on top of your targets, but you can turn off them and there’s an high degree of customization about the informations you decide the UI is going to show you. For example you can adjust the tooltips when you move the mouse over a spell to display exactly what you want. You can really spend hours in the game like I did just by toying with all the settings.

The dialogue system you use to talk with the NPCs and get quests is exactly the same of SWG (and there are many other systems that the two games share). You have a chat bubble on the left of the NPC with what he is saying and your dialogue options on the right. You click on the option you choose and the dialogue continues. This is actually quite refreshing when in WoW there isn’t any interaction whatsoever but then this feature is also not really fully used. Don’t expect rich, branching dialogues, most of the times you just have an option to continue and another to quit. The system is there though, and could be rather powerful if used correctly.

I could start to talk about the graphic and animations and never stop. At the highest setting possible the technical features of the game make it look rather pleasing, but then don’t expect it to move more than two characters at the same time. The animations have the same problems of SWG. It seems that they are made with motion capture and they feel rather generic and uninspired. Not really appropriate when they are supposed to characterize fantasy races like huge ogres. So the result is disappointing. There are actually two problems, one about the animations themselves and another about the movement of other characters and mobs around you. The fact is that both the mobs and other players move jerkily around and this reminds me again SWG. It’s not odd to see a mob spinning awkwardly while chasing you and you can forget the polish and fluidity of WoW’s animations. In EQ2 everything is much more approximate and imprecise.

These two problems (generic animations and jerky movements) make the game not so pleasing and in fact you can find them criticized even by other players but what I hate the most is a lack of polish that could have been easily avoided. For example my ogre uses a lance, when the combat is over he tucks the lance on his side, only to see the lance “warp” quikcly on its back, since it isn’t supposed to be on the side. The point is that the game has also another animation that would put the lance properly on the back, but that weapon was flagged uncorrectly and this is a trend you find often in the game, with animations that look imprecise and rough or play at the wrong time.

The newbie island feels much like Guild Wars. The spaces are small and the layout retains some of the “labyrinthine” feel of GW. This is also an impression that doesn’t go completely away as you leave the island. EQ2 is divided into smaller zones and it’s not rare to bump against invisible barriers that limit where you can go. The restrictions aren’t as bad as in GW, but the lack of maps in many zones and the impossibility to rationalize the exploration and geography make the travel rather hard. You finish to move from zone to zone without really knowing from where you arrived and toward where you are going. What upset me even more were the respawn timers. I couldn’t fight something without something else popping up on top of me midfight. I reached a point where I could stand easily long battles with mobs one or two levels below me and it wasn’t rare to start the fight against one mob and finish it against five other mobs that walked in or spawned on top of me. This is particularly bad because you don’t have the mobs “fading in” as in WoW. They just pop-up and aggro right away and as they die they also disappear without any kind of decent effect, leaving in the place huge and inappropriate loot chests. It was also not rare for the death animations to break and the bodies freezed standing still in front of me. This happened to me constantly on the newbie island and I’m not sure if the respawn timers are variable and different in the other zones, but my impression is that not much changed.

Another part that I really hate is about the spell effects. As with the rest of the art the quality has sharp highs and lows. Some spells look amazing, some are horrible glowing randomness. In general they are all way too much bloated and inflated. There’s an insane amount of particle effects and I really developed an intolerance toward it. It just goes beyond every measure. Even the weaker spell has all these shiny particles that explode everywhere like fireworks without any sense. It’s again like they had the effect supported and started to use heavily everywhere without any discretion. What pissed me off the most is that the game is totally unrealistic and faked. You’ll have bears that stuns you. Okay, stunning sounds like a reasonable skill for a bear, but in EQ2 the stun is a fancyful yellow particle effects that spins around you. Come on. Even the frigging BEARS have shiny particle effects attacks. All the spells, skills and effects look completely inconsistent like that example and melee classes that are supposed to rely on the iron of their swords are hardly discernable from spell caster. There are particle effects everywhere and even fighting a rat turns into christmas tree. Some people may find this pretty and cool, for me it was more like an indigestion. Too exaggerated and unjustified. I wonder how the game could look later on because you can only add so many particle effects without making the combat look totally stupid. I guess EQ2 may cross that limit around level 10…

Beside these negative comments I had a fair amount of fun. The quest system is richer compared to WoW and you often have to interact of objects in your inventory, like joining together parts of letters to find hints and unblock the next step for a quest. In general the quests have many multiple steps before you get the reward and every little detail is clearly explained in the quest log. You’ll never feel lost and this is one aspect where EQ2 outperforms WoW. The quest system is more flexible, detailed and satisfying to play. There are still simple quests like fetching letters or kill things, but these steps are usually part of a bigger purpose and all tied together instead of totally undependent excuses to go out and kill stuff. The quests on the newbie islands also do a very good work to keep you interested and intrigued since there are some mysteries that you have to figure out as you follow the quests. So you aren’t moving forward just for the reward, but also because you start to get absorbed in the story and really want to know “what’s next”. In WoW this NEVER happened to me. The stories in the quests could have been funny and humorous, but were never a driving purpose for me beside the “carrot”.

At level 5 I disabled the “combat experience” (great feature) because I was levelling too fast. Currently I’m level 8 and I never reactivated the exp. This because I just enjoy following the quests and I already get enough experience from them.

I think I’m going to break these comments and continue this last part elsewhere, since I explained it better when I wrote about it on QT3. I think it works better to draw my conclusions about the game.