I’m currently giving EQ2 another try. I quit in early 2005 and much has changed since then.
A few observations:
1. The game still runs like a turd. My computer isn’t top of the line anymore (P4 3.0 GHz, GF 6800 Ultra, 1 GB RAM) but it’s still pretty damn decent – far better than what most gamers are playing on. The performance is insufferable. I spent about an hour trying to find the best compromise between visual quality and performance. The problem is that there is no good compromise. The game either runs dog slow or it looks like shit. I don’t even want to imagine what it must be like on lower-end computers.
2. Memory Leaks, long loading times, severe stuttering as soon as more than 4 PCs/NPCs are on screen - little, if anything has improved in overall non-graphics-related performance.
3. Stability doesn’t seem to have improved all that much, in fact, for me it has gotten worse. I experienced 3 crashes in 6 hours, which required a hard reset becaus the game crashed the video card driver right along with itself.
4. The new Newbie Island sucks. It’s like the old one, just with fewer and less interesting quests. It feels incomplete and empty. I liked the old Newbie Island, it was one of the most polished parts of EQ2 at release. The new one just isn’t as fun, even though it’s a bit better from a lore point of view.
5. The new class structure is a huge improvement. Classes feel more different from each other and you aren’t stuck in some generic archetype class for 20 levels anymore.
6. The combat update a few months ago has definately made combat more fun. Combat feels more interactive and the skills seem more useful and coherent now. I’ll have to see how combat evolves through the levels but so far my level 11 n00b Brigand is fun to play and I use most skills frequently. I still wish they’d have done away with the power pool in order to make melee and magic feel a bit more different from each other. The same applies to the particle effects. Everything you do makes things look like a fucking Christmas tree, no matter if it’s a powerful spell or just some melee attack.
7. Quest progression is way off now. You level much faster and quests turn green and gray as you run simple fed-ex quests in your city. You aren’t really required to enter the newbie yards anymore, which used to be an important part of the newbie experience. It’s probably not a bad idea to get new players and alts out into the world zones (where the real game begins) as quickly as possible but the low level content now feels incoherent and rushed. A lot of good content goes to waste. I guess it’s for the overall good of the game but it makes the newbie levels much less interesting.
8. The new death system is an improvement. Not because it’s particularly good but because the old one was too convoluted. Death is rather trivial now but at least it’s straight-forward.
9. The UI has improved some but it’s still ugly as sin and doesn’t feel as responsive and snappy as WoW’s. At least it’s still as configurable as it used to be – something that I greatly appreciate, especially after having to keep up with WoW’s inflexible out-of-the-box UI. I always hated being forced to rely on 3rd party mods in WoW. SOE should try to improve the look and feel of EQ2’s UI, at least to a point where it doesn’t look like an mid-1990s shareware abomination.
10. The new map-system is useful and makes locating quest NPCs much less frustrating. I used to be very anti-map in MMORPGs but once you got used to it it’s hard to go back. I think all those Vanguard fanboy armchair designers who scream bloody murder every time someone even mentions the word automap should go and try to play EQ2 without it. It’s not fun.
11. Quest NPCs now have icon hovering above their heads, WoW style. This used to be another thing I didn’t like, but thinking about it, I like randomly hailing every NPC in a zone even less.
12. The visuals are still a mess. It’s bad enough that the game runs like shit even on settings that look extremely average. What’s even worse is the LOD algorithm. It’s too intrusive. A good LOD algorithm tries to make the adjustments as gradual and unobtrusive as possible. EQ2’s LOD algorithm is especially bad with animations: they look horrible even from a medium distance and sometimes it completely breaks down and other players appear to be frozen in their current posture.
13. SOGA models… they don’t look as nice as I thought they would but I guess they’re still better than the original models.
14. It’s too early to make a final judgement but itemization seems to have improved. There is definately more item diversity at lower levels now, even though that’s not much of an achivement considering that there wasn’t any diversity at all initially.
15. There’s a mail system now. And it actually seems to work rather well. The mailboxes look like outhouses, though.
16. The quest journal has improved tremendously. It now holds 75 quests and you can sort by zone and category. It’s actually useful now.
17. The German localization is still horribly broken – in many regards things are even worse now than they were one year ago. EQ2’s localization woes warrant a posting of their own. It’s quite a story. Deception, lies, broken promises and incompetence. It’s all there. Good stuff.
All in all, EQ2 is still a mixed bag. Considering its age, the game still feels very unpolished. The newbie content even more so than it did at release. There is improvement though, maybe even enough a an improvement to make me keep playing. I’m looking forward to see what has changed at level 20+.