1. I have corrected the e-mail settings so that outgoing e-mails from these forums should be sent now. If you tried to Register or Reset your Password, please try again!
    Dismiss Notice

What do you miss most about EQ2?

Discussion in 'EverQuest II General Discussion' started by Vicious0093, Mar 19, 2020.

  1. Vicious0093

    Vicious0093 New Member

    I played the game from release until RoK, on and off as I played WoW and FFXI at the time as well. What did you like most about EQ2 when you played it?

    For me it was the dungeon crawling in parties. EQ2 used to handle the whole "The journey is the destination" thing very well. Dungeon crawling was rewarding and no other game offered a similar experience. I loved EoF and the number of open world zones to explore with a group of strangers. I always thought it was much more rewarding to get a good item from an open world dungeon than an instance like in WoW.

    I haven't been able to find enjoyment in the game in recent years, I dont know anything about retail but it sounds like a complete joke. I did try the progression TLEs but the experience was ruined by unbalanced classes and itemization. It really sucks not being able to play the game I used to like so much.
     
    • Appreciation Appreciation x 2
    • Like Like x 1
  2. Pixistik

    Pixistik Member

    The old original battlegrounds.
    Most fun I have had in an online game Ever.
     
    • Appreciation Appreciation x 2
  3. Castegyre

    Castegyre Active Member

    For me EQ2 was always a compromise.

    I very much enjoy Norrath, but EQ1 is a superior version of the setting.

    I don't like the fixed opposing factions, EQ1 factions were superior.

    Housing was quite good for a while, but I never thought it was better than SWG. Later on other games like RIFT and Wildstar definitely exceeded EQ2.

    The combat wasn't horrible, but I wouldn't say it was better than an older game like DAoC. I would also put CoH easily superior to EQ2 in that area,.

    The avatars and a lot of the related art assets fell short of other, older titles like SWG, CoH, and WoW. People can quibble over the style of the art and whether or not they like it, but the quality is really not so good. EQ2 started with a flawed design in that regard and never really recovered. You can actually see some of the problems if you have a newer graphics card (as in, within the last 5 or 6 years) and turn the game up higher than it was initially intended to be run at. EQ2 was better than other older games like EQ, DAoC, or AC, though.

    As a personal preference I find the fundamental world design to be flawed. Outleveled content that offers little to no further use to the player is effectively useless content in the long run. Chronomancers helped a bit, but they were a pale attempt to copy something like the mentoring system in CoH. Later games like ESO and GW2, while I know some people hate them for this, have fairly stable systems in place that allow the whole world to always be useful even if parts of it are a bit easy.

    EQ2 gave us far more abilities to use than games like EQ1 or DAoC did, but it kept filling our bars with things to click. So many things. CoH is about half a year older and even in it's later state I can play it with 4-6 bars max and not feel like I'm missing half of the things I might need to click. Later games like SWTOR manage to offer a playstyle that feels reminiscent of a game like EQ2 or early WoW without needing more than maybe 4 bars. EQ2 most of my characters defaults to 10-12 bars. It was just too bloated.

    I started playing EQ2 at launch and didn't really stop until about 4 years ago. In that time I enjoyed grouping for a fair amount of the content and trying to solo as much of it as I could often handicapping my self to do so. In the beginning the game was much more difficult than it was when I stopped playing, but then most games are that way. While I had fun I never really felt that EQ2 excelled in this area over many of the two dozen or so other MMOs I've played over the years. I actually feel that what EQ2 started out as should have evolved into something more like what FFXIV is now than what it became.

    But my spousal unit very much enjoyed EQ2. I met a lot of ***hats, but also some cool people there. I'm also a fan of 90's era Forgotten Realms rip-offs, so I'm a fan of Norrath. So I played the heck out of it for years, probably more than any other MMO besides CoH. I never thought it was the best game. It has certainly always had its flaws. It was a good game more often than not and sometimes the quirks made it more endearing. Overall I think my fondest memories are of the people more so than the game itself.
     
    • Appreciation Appreciation x 3
    • Like Like x 2
  4. Errrorr

    Errrorr Active Member

    The people.

    Honestly the best part of EQ2 over the years has been the experiences & social aspects.
     
    • Agree Agree x 5
    • Appreciation Appreciation x 4
    • Like Like x 1
    • Winner Winner x 1
  5. JimmyBananas

    JimmyBananas Guest

    The lore. As much as I've preferred the way that other MMORPGs play, I've always loved the lore of the EverQuest universe. I also thought that EQ2 had particularly fun/creative holiday content. Oh, the housing system was also very good, and I remember having a blast making a Halloween haunted house for my friends and I to enjoy.

    It's hard to put my finger on it, but EQ2 had a "feeling" about it that I really enjoyed. There were a lot of little "things" that other MMORPGs took themselves too seriously to try. The skeleton popping up in the screen, some of the silly events, and the more creative in-dungeon "scripts" that you had to follow, back before it all became ridiculous and more stressful than fun.

    I'd never touch EQ2 or another SoE/Daybreak/whatever game again, but I also don't regret having spent what time I did on EQ2. Lots of good times and fun memories.
     
    • Appreciation Appreciation x 3
    • Agree Agree x 2
    • Like Like x 1
  6. Tekka

    Tekka That Village Idiot

    I enjoyed the Holiday Gauntlet, and the challenges of decorating with limited item types and tools with a steep learning curve.

    I also met my best friend in EQ2 (as well as a whole lot of weirdo assholes).

    The main spread in my sushi/tea house, made from random bits:




    And the namesake (The Grassy Gnoll) wall art I made for the entrance, also from random bits:

     
    • Like Like x 3
    • Appreciation Appreciation x 1
  7. Ursa Minor

    Ursa Minor New Member

    Honestly, I don't miss much from EQ2. Original EQ, that I miss more. Especially the faction game. I had an Iksar monk that was working hard on being socially acceptable everywhere. Got a fair bit done too, could walk around unmolested in the major citys (mostly; was still working on North Freeport as I recall). Enlisted the help of a buddy to work faction in Halas, he would pull the hostile guard away from the faction turn-in NPC ("Hey, can you show me where the bank is?"), I'd run in with a pack full of faction turn ins and feign death at the NPC's feet, then proceed to turn them in until gone. Don't ask me why the NPC was accepting faction items from a corpse. Had to repeat that routine about 5 times before the Iksar could walk into Halas without getting hammered.

    That sane buddy had one of the funniest duels I've ever seen. A barbarian challenged him to a duel, and my buddy (a wizard) agreed with one proviso; no weapons. He then proceeded to beat that barbarian to a pulp. My buddy is a OCD type who, if he has a skill available, wants to have it maxed. His Unarmed was maxed; I remember him punching mammoths in the frozen north to raise it up. The poor barbarian had never worked his Unarmed up at all.
     
    • Funny Funny x 4
    • Appreciation Appreciation x 1
  8. Tekka

    Tekka That Village Idiot


    That reminds me of my best (the one and only) duel story ever, also in EQ.

    A guy was standing at the mouth of the EC Tunnel challenging folks to duel. I don't remember what class he was, but he would target lower level or clothies, then brag and mock them in zone chat when he won. (you know the sort)


    I had dual mains, druid and monk. I happened to be on my monk, and because I've always liked fluff and dress up, I had one of the few robes a monk could wear, as well as a stein and doll - all of which casters generally used. You see where this is going...

    I accepted his challenge, Tiger Clawed his face, swapped out the robe, then proceeded to monk-stomp him into the ground. He lost his damn mind and said I'd 'tricked' him somehow. Mind you, I wasn't set /anon or /role, so all he had to do was do /who <name> to see my level and class...

    In any case, folks he'd been mocking gave a bit of it back to him, and I laughed my butt off.

    The end.


     
    • Like Like x 2
    • Winner Winner x 2
    • Funny Funny x 1
  9. Zhaanish

    Zhaanish Active Member

    Loved the housing. Still my favorite in-game house decorating of all games I've played except UO (old original UO where houses had meaning and where you put them meant something).

    Loved alts and duo'ing with my husband doing overland quests.

    Loved the seasonal events like Frostfell.

    Enjoyed our small but tight knit guild and enjoyed decorating our guild hall which the other members were fine with me doing it all. :) And LOVED the ability to save decoration layouts so I could customize the GH for all seasons and save each one.

    Enjoyed crafting to a point and liked being pretty self sufficient with alts plus husbands alts.

    Liked harvesting and getting a harvesting pony and upgrading him.

    Liked how much variety there used to be in the game (decorating, housing, crafting, questing, dungeons, raids, harvesting, etc etc).

    I played EQ1 until EQ2 came out. I can honestly say I ended up liking EQ2 more for a time, even though I loved EQ1. EQ1 was perfect for that time in my life when I had a lot of disposable time (20s) and great hands to play with - loved playing an SK on raids and FD pulling!). EQ2 was great for the next stage in my life when my hands weren't as great and my game playing time was sporadic and limited.

    I miss it but I miss what it used to be, not what it is now.
     
    • Agree Agree x 4
  10. Zhaanish

    Zhaanish Active Member

    oh this makes me miss the decorating so much! And yes I did like how decorating was really a challenge. I got very good at using the 3rd party layout tool to place floors and such. It was it's own challenge!
     
    • Agree Agree x 2
  11. Endymion

    Endymion Active Member

    I agree with a lot of this. I always compare it to home cooking versus a restaurant meal. Qualitatively, I know a restaurant meal is better, but there's something that just hits you on an emotional level with a home cooked meal. To the developers' credit, they do still try to get "cute" (for lack of a better term) sometimes, like the duck zone from a few expansions ago, it's just harder to do with a small team, both because they have so much other work to do and because having more designers = more people to have interesting ideas for those weird little gimmicks.

    I also miss being somewhat ignorant of MMO design (and game design in general really). When you see the hamster wheels, the world stops feeling like a world. This applies to any MMO for me, not just EQ2. But I played EQ2 early enough in my MMO career that it still had some of that magic. I can still somewhat enjoy games for what they are but I usually get bored kind of quickly.
     
    • Agree Agree x 3
    • Appreciation Appreciation x 2
    • Like Like x 1
  12. Adoninilol

    Adoninilol Member

    The raids and the community.

    I have still yet to find anything more volatile, and hilarious; than eq2flames in my entire playing career.

    I always enjoyed the class design in this game, it wasn't always perfect but having this many classes and having them do such niche/have great abilities in certain scenarios is one of the best parts of this game. On TLE it's nice to have to time porcupine around an AOE, make people stack for tshells, having tanks/healers be more than temp spam and otherwise you die. I both like and despise being able to bring in a troub for jcaps and harmonization versus a dirge at times, but it's better than having 12 classes and not having much creativity/specs to down encounters.

    Guild Wars 2 has somewhat of a cool design, but you basically just stack four to five classes and the raids offer no linear gear progression. One thing I hated about eq2 for the longest time was the crit mit/crit chance/prismatic resistance checks that they started to implement. Luckily that's all gone on TLE, live I hear resolve isn't as bad now but; I just wish they had learned from previous gear gating based off a stat rather than overall outgoing damage/healing abilities.

    TLE has a myriad of issues, mitigation isn't scaling properly because it's based off the live forumla for some unknown reason. Meaning I need like 60k mitigation to truly cap a tanks mitigation, but things seem to be tuned around that so it's not bad; but I recall hitting Hunker Down and truly mitigating a lot more hits, then cycling battle cry inbetween my other temps. It just doesn't exist now unfortunately. The same goes for shields, you need something insane like 6.5k protection to cap uncontested block on a plate tank, but the most you can reach is around 5k assuming you have a warden, dirge 5 second block buffs etc.

    I raided on live for a long time, I was clearing most if not all of the content in expansions when it was current tier, but live now just lacks any solid class design, itemization that was exciting, and the pay to win/rampant stats is what draws me away. It's nice to open the chest and find a weapon thats best in slot because it has a pet who does work, opening the Avatar chest and finding the stoneskin boots etc. I know people hated fyreflyte for the Avatar gear debacle in TSO, but he at least made loot exciting, shard of fear, shard of hate, TSO. ETC. Loot was more than just a stat upgrade, it was comparing procs, wearing this proc gear on this mob, having to choose more personal damage for reduced healing, item procs a clicky heal in the bags, the list goes on.

    We just got Avatars on TLE and they're not perfect, a few of the things from original avatars is missing. We can't drag pillars on flame, which now means we're not always tucked in so it's actually a lot harder than it was originally, mischief in EoF has some of his later mechanics, same with growth. Although TLE is "easier" in a lot of cases, it is nice for the devs to expect us to deal with TSO scripts on these mobs despite being stuck into the gear/spells we have now. I can't even stress how much "easier" these encounters would be with 80 abilities/TSO AA's; but it makes for a fun fight.
     
    • Like Like x 1
  13. JimmyBananas

    JimmyBananas Guest

    I think this goes for a lot of us who've been playing MMORPGs for years and years now, and it's made even worse by the fact that these days everything's on YouTube, or a Wiki, or a test realm, etc., etc., etc. By the time patches actually drop, the magic and surprise has long-since been beaten out of it and everyone's in a rush to get the latest stuff, or the latest "meta", or blow through the latest quest line.

    People think they can bring the feeling back with things like TLE servers, classic variants, and games like Pantheon, but it's nowhere near the same. People were different, the gaming culture was very different, and the ignorance was wonderful. I can still enjoy modern MMORPGs for what they are, but now, they feel much more like a casual hobby/activity than an "alternate world" to inhabit.
     
    • Like Like x 3
    • Agree Agree x 2
    • Appreciation Appreciation x 1
  14. Sweatypie

    Sweatypie Active Member

    I am crazy but I liked when the game wasnt actually quest based. I miss heritage quests and I miss a raid quest line, not just a click this item in raid zone and kill 3 bosses to get new quest thing. Quests were an afterthought and gave you lore bits. I loved having to group to level effectively. Today grouping is a luxury and a lot of players never get to experience it because there is almost no PUG happening.

    The thing I miss the most though is unique gear with unique procs and charms with more variation in clickys. I think for the last few years we only had 5 different charm clickys. I hate the armor system and I hate gems. I got 300 of each already with nothing to spend it on.

    I miss contested group zones. I miss open world raid bosses too.

    Oh and working content.
     
    Last edited: Mar 20, 2020
    • Like Like x 2
    • Agree Agree x 2
  15. Zynt

    Zynt Active Member

    Domino
     
    • Appreciation Appreciation x 5
    • Agree Agree x 4
    • Winner Winner x 1
  16. Alarra

    Alarra Active Member

    The old game I preferred the people and the experience as it felt new, not for the game itself I would say.
    Later I enjoyed the BG's during the DoV expac when there was a lot of people participating.
    I also enjoyed playing during that period with the groups.
    Recent stuff, the Chaos Descending Expac I enjoyed.
     
    • Like Like x 1
    • Agree Agree x 1
  17. Zhaanish

    Zhaanish Active Member

    Totally agree. I still enjoy MMOs but it's never been like UO and EQ1 again and it will never be. As you said the industry has changed but so have we. I don't want to do a 1 hour plus corpse run anymore. I don't want to get pk'd when I step out of my house (UO). Games are different but so are we.
     
    • Agree Agree x 4
  18. Zhaanish

    Zhaanish Active Member

    Yep her leaving ultimately lead to my leaving as a player.
     
    • Agree Agree x 2
    • Like Like x 1
  19. Fuli

    Fuli Well-Known Member

    Pretty much eveything <= to RoK (although, RoK was also when Georgeson started the process of systematically f*****g everything up).

    • People in the cities.
    • Open world PvP.
    • Long, difficult HQ's with fun stories.
    • Contested dungeon crawls.
    • Quests everywhere.
    • The social environment.
    • Old school stats (none of the garbage stats and gating mechanics that creeped in under Georgeson/Kander: AM, Pot, flurry, fervor, resolve, etc).
    • Old school itemization - the reward at the end of the HQ, the boss at the end of the zone, that that dude in that one room way back in the contested zone - all unique items that meant something.
    • One leveling system: your character.
    • Customer service.
    • Huge open world zones.
    • No spell research.
    • Meaningful crafting economy.
    I miss playing the EQ2 mmorpg. Today's game is a p2w rip-off with almost nothing to do except raid.
     
    • Agree Agree x 3
    • Like Like x 1
    • Winner Winner x 1
  20. Endymion

    Endymion Active Member

    He didn't work on EQ2 until like SF though lol.
     
    • Agree Agree x 1

Share This Page