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Well, here's my review.
The graphics are stunning. The world is beautiful. The characters are beautiful. The armor is detailed and the spell effects are amazing. There's still a lot of lag and things get pretty choppy for me at high population times. Where I don't get any kind of lag in EQ1 except in Bazaar and the PoK bank, and absolutely nowhere in WoW, I get it all over the place in EQ2. It's getting better, but it's not fixed enough yet. I usually get a headache from the choppiness after about an hour of play time. I did have a problem being able to see when I first logged in, but once I changed the gamma setting, I was fine.
The tutorial is definitely a good thing to do the first time you get in. The UI is different from EQ1 and it will take some getting used to. Use the tutorial. When you go back to make a second character, you have the option to skip the tutorial, and be automatically put on the Isle of Refuge at level 2 with the items you would have gotten on the tutorial, so no loss once you know how to use the UI.
So far there's not much variance in armor on anyone. But I'm sure that will change as players get higher level and find (or make) different armor sets. So that's not really a complaint.
I do dislike the fact that, while there are solo mobs and solo quests, it's very obvious that the devs really would prefer it if you group. A number of the mobs required to complete quests, even at early stages, require groups to do so. And you don't get any clue from the quest itself that you're going to need a group. You find that out when you find the mob. My quest journal is full of quests I can't complete alone and haven't been able to get a group to help me with.
On the plus side, you can instantly tell what mobs are going to need groups and which ones are solo. There are little arrows beside the mob name for mobs that require help. Below the mobs name when you target it, it will say solo or group, but that's not always as accurate an indicator, since I've been able to solo mobs that said they were group mobs - however none of those had the arrows beside their name. The arrows are MUCH more accurate indicators of the mob's strength. Even if the mob is blue to you, you're not going to be able to take it down solo if it has 2 arrows next to it. Also, mobs that are KoS have a red outline around the letters of their name. So just by mousing over them, you know which mobs will want to eat you. That's a nice difference from having to stop and con every mob you run into.
One of the things I absolutely DETEST, however, comes from grouping. When you're in a group, as soon as one person in the group engages a mob, everyone in the group pulls their weapons and goes into a fighting stance. A stance which makes it not only absurd looking, but really difficult to run. A number of times when I've been grouped and have died, I will be running back to join my group, only to suddenly go into fighting stance and sideways waddle instead of running. That's horribly, horribly irritating.
The quests are good. They give you a really significant amount of experience for doing them, unlike in EQ1 where after about level 10 you could forget even being able to see your experience bar move for completing even your epic quest. There are plenty of quests, from killing to finding to delivering. Some of them have interesting story lines and are quite enjoyable to do - until you get to the part where you can't finish it because you need a group and no-one else is killing those sunsprites right now... Still, there are plenty of solo quests that can be done. No need to stand around camping this or that for experience. Just go fill up your quest log and start running around to different zones completing them, picking up more as you go. I'm a VERY casual player and it still didn't take me long to get to level 9 with my priest where it was time to make a choice about my class.
The choice of class, right now, really doesn't make a huge difference in what you're playing. Choose an archetype you like, because that's what you're going to be playing - scout, fighter, priest or mage. There are minor differences between the classes and sub-classes, but they're really minor right now. Shaman's get a wraith form or a bear form depending on subclass. Druids get a wolf form or a lion form depending on subclass. All four forms do exactly the same thing. All six priest subclasses get the exact same rez spells at exactly the same levels. Druids and shaman get a SoW spell. Clerics get a teleport that sends the target to their home city (which I really don't understand since everyone gets a spell that takes them back to their home city).
Mobs are "locked" to whichever person or group first casts on them. No KS'ing here. Unfortunately, once you're locked in an encounter, no-one outside your group can cast on you either. Which means when I see someone soloing a mob and about to die, I can't help them out by throwing them a quick heal. For some people that isn't really going to make any difference. For me it's a real irritant.
Some of the mobs you fight will drop chests. The nicest loot is in the chests. The chests, however, are trapped a la LDoN chests. They're still tuning the trap strengths (thank GOD, since one of them the other night killed me in one shot when I was at full health). Scouts have the ability to disarm the traps on chests, which is a big plus for having a scout in your group. Believe me, if you're in a group, you want the scout.
I dislike the tradeskills. I was an obsessive tradeskiller in EQ1. I don't like them at all in EQ2. The UI does have the benefit of making it nearly impossible to macro, so that's something going for it. And it does find all your ingredients in your bags for you, so no clicking and dropping. But you're still at the mercy of the random number generator. There are still failures where you'll lose a complete level on the item you're working on. Each item has 4 levels - crude, shaped, regular and pristine. Being able to make pristine is very very rare. Most of the time you can pull off regular, but occasionally I had failures that threw me all the way back down to shaped which was horribly frustrating. And while you're not clicking and dropping, what you're really doing now is playing a game of Simon with the computer while trying to watch your progress. As you work you will get incidents down at the bottom of your window, things like daydreaming, wrong ingredients, or noisy distraction. You then have to click the correct counter for whichever incident has popped up. If you don't you take physical damage. Tradeskilling can, quite literally, kill you if you don't pay attention to what you're doing. Don't let the kids distract you or the phone ring while you're in the middle of a run. And don't even think of carrying on a conversation in game while you're tradeskilling.
All in all, I think the game is going to be good for power gamers (and by power gamers, I don't mean big raiders - I mean people who spend half their life playing the game). There's a lot to do, and you need a lot of time to do it. If you're a casual player who only plays an hour or so a night, you're probably going to get frustrated with your lack of progress and how quickly you're left behind. If you have a lot of time to spend in the game, you'll love it.
Personally, I think they're making a mistake by trying to rush it out to retail. A couple of more months of tuning and working on the lag (a BIG problem, but getting better at every patch) and fixing the small bugs still in the game would be much better than racing WoW to the shelves and releasing with a lot of problems.
Regardless, the game is fun and interesting and I predict it will do well. If you're burned out on EQ1 but still want to stay in Norrath, convince your friends to give EQ2 a try. If you start the game with a ready group, you're in for a fantastic ride.
The graphics are stunning. The world is beautiful. The characters are beautiful. The armor is detailed and the spell effects are amazing. There's still a lot of lag and things get pretty choppy for me at high population times. Where I don't get any kind of lag in EQ1 except in Bazaar and the PoK bank, and absolutely nowhere in WoW, I get it all over the place in EQ2. It's getting better, but it's not fixed enough yet. I usually get a headache from the choppiness after about an hour of play time. I did have a problem being able to see when I first logged in, but once I changed the gamma setting, I was fine.
The tutorial is definitely a good thing to do the first time you get in. The UI is different from EQ1 and it will take some getting used to. Use the tutorial. When you go back to make a second character, you have the option to skip the tutorial, and be automatically put on the Isle of Refuge at level 2 with the items you would have gotten on the tutorial, so no loss once you know how to use the UI.
So far there's not much variance in armor on anyone. But I'm sure that will change as players get higher level and find (or make) different armor sets. So that's not really a complaint.
I do dislike the fact that, while there are solo mobs and solo quests, it's very obvious that the devs really would prefer it if you group. A number of the mobs required to complete quests, even at early stages, require groups to do so. And you don't get any clue from the quest itself that you're going to need a group. You find that out when you find the mob. My quest journal is full of quests I can't complete alone and haven't been able to get a group to help me with.
On the plus side, you can instantly tell what mobs are going to need groups and which ones are solo. There are little arrows beside the mob name for mobs that require help. Below the mobs name when you target it, it will say solo or group, but that's not always as accurate an indicator, since I've been able to solo mobs that said they were group mobs - however none of those had the arrows beside their name. The arrows are MUCH more accurate indicators of the mob's strength. Even if the mob is blue to you, you're not going to be able to take it down solo if it has 2 arrows next to it. Also, mobs that are KoS have a red outline around the letters of their name. So just by mousing over them, you know which mobs will want to eat you. That's a nice difference from having to stop and con every mob you run into.
One of the things I absolutely DETEST, however, comes from grouping. When you're in a group, as soon as one person in the group engages a mob, everyone in the group pulls their weapons and goes into a fighting stance. A stance which makes it not only absurd looking, but really difficult to run. A number of times when I've been grouped and have died, I will be running back to join my group, only to suddenly go into fighting stance and sideways waddle instead of running. That's horribly, horribly irritating.
The quests are good. They give you a really significant amount of experience for doing them, unlike in EQ1 where after about level 10 you could forget even being able to see your experience bar move for completing even your epic quest. There are plenty of quests, from killing to finding to delivering. Some of them have interesting story lines and are quite enjoyable to do - until you get to the part where you can't finish it because you need a group and no-one else is killing those sunsprites right now... Still, there are plenty of solo quests that can be done. No need to stand around camping this or that for experience. Just go fill up your quest log and start running around to different zones completing them, picking up more as you go. I'm a VERY casual player and it still didn't take me long to get to level 9 with my priest where it was time to make a choice about my class.
The choice of class, right now, really doesn't make a huge difference in what you're playing. Choose an archetype you like, because that's what you're going to be playing - scout, fighter, priest or mage. There are minor differences between the classes and sub-classes, but they're really minor right now. Shaman's get a wraith form or a bear form depending on subclass. Druids get a wolf form or a lion form depending on subclass. All four forms do exactly the same thing. All six priest subclasses get the exact same rez spells at exactly the same levels. Druids and shaman get a SoW spell. Clerics get a teleport that sends the target to their home city (which I really don't understand since everyone gets a spell that takes them back to their home city).
Mobs are "locked" to whichever person or group first casts on them. No KS'ing here. Unfortunately, once you're locked in an encounter, no-one outside your group can cast on you either. Which means when I see someone soloing a mob and about to die, I can't help them out by throwing them a quick heal. For some people that isn't really going to make any difference. For me it's a real irritant.
Some of the mobs you fight will drop chests. The nicest loot is in the chests. The chests, however, are trapped a la LDoN chests. They're still tuning the trap strengths (thank GOD, since one of them the other night killed me in one shot when I was at full health). Scouts have the ability to disarm the traps on chests, which is a big plus for having a scout in your group. Believe me, if you're in a group, you want the scout.
I dislike the tradeskills. I was an obsessive tradeskiller in EQ1. I don't like them at all in EQ2. The UI does have the benefit of making it nearly impossible to macro, so that's something going for it. And it does find all your ingredients in your bags for you, so no clicking and dropping. But you're still at the mercy of the random number generator. There are still failures where you'll lose a complete level on the item you're working on. Each item has 4 levels - crude, shaped, regular and pristine. Being able to make pristine is very very rare. Most of the time you can pull off regular, but occasionally I had failures that threw me all the way back down to shaped which was horribly frustrating. And while you're not clicking and dropping, what you're really doing now is playing a game of Simon with the computer while trying to watch your progress. As you work you will get incidents down at the bottom of your window, things like daydreaming, wrong ingredients, or noisy distraction. You then have to click the correct counter for whichever incident has popped up. If you don't you take physical damage. Tradeskilling can, quite literally, kill you if you don't pay attention to what you're doing. Don't let the kids distract you or the phone ring while you're in the middle of a run. And don't even think of carrying on a conversation in game while you're tradeskilling.
All in all, I think the game is going to be good for power gamers (and by power gamers, I don't mean big raiders - I mean people who spend half their life playing the game). There's a lot to do, and you need a lot of time to do it. If you're a casual player who only plays an hour or so a night, you're probably going to get frustrated with your lack of progress and how quickly you're left behind. If you have a lot of time to spend in the game, you'll love it.
Personally, I think they're making a mistake by trying to rush it out to retail. A couple of more months of tuning and working on the lag (a BIG problem, but getting better at every patch) and fixing the small bugs still in the game would be much better than racing WoW to the shelves and releasing with a lot of problems.
Regardless, the game is fun and interesting and I predict it will do well. If you're burned out on EQ1 but still want to stay in Norrath, convince your friends to give EQ2 a try. If you start the game with a ready group, you're in for a fantastic ride.
The self port to home has a 1 hour recast timer. The cleric port takes a reagent, but a few second recast. (maybe 30 secs? don't know becasue I do not have it... SHaman)
Ngreth Thergn
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