Classic Everquest II Server

[Zekayy]

How does the idea of a classic EQ II server sound after p99 blue reaches its final patch I know I would love something like this, I would love to hear your thought.

[Stormfists]

Would support... but they released a true progression server with original coding a couple of years ago. They'll likely do this regularly.

[Gilder]

Ya know I never got to play EQ 2, was it any good?

[Meiva]

Meh...

I did play EQ2 beta, and then for a few months when it went live. I can't put my finger on it, but it was missing something big for me. I couldn't stay hooked. It had fast travel, but you had to discover the locations first which made it not entirely immersion breaking...

There were some really, really neat dungeons but they ended up feeling like a grind. Which being a fan of P99 you'd think I would enjoy but I didn't. I didn't like the skills or spells system at all. They had heroic spells and skills which involved casting the same few spells and skills over and over so you trigger a big boom bonus spell or skill. That was neat for a short while.

Most of the open world zones felt bland and empty. Like... Lazily bland and empty. That Zek zone was just a cluster fuck, imo. Nek forest is really neat though! I also recall when EQ2 went live that you needed to quest for a key to enter Nek, and that was neat. Never checked out the raid scene, maybe that was fun.

They promised voice over for all NPC's and then gave up on it. They had some true talent for the voice overs too. That was too bad.. Most quests didn't immerse me. Many felt like kill x number of this, and x number of that, then collect x of these.

I wouldn't play classic EQ2, and I doubt much of the P99 population would enjoy it either.

[khanable]

I would at the very least give it a try

I do like the set and setting of EQ - I never gave EQ2 a proper go way back when, so I would try it now

[Baler]

Will it be just as buggy and terrible as the real EQ2 release? :p
There is a reason it never got super popular.

Also this thread belongs in Off Topic. Server Chat is for Everquest and Project 1999 discussion. everquest 2 Does Not Equal everquest.

[Bboboo]

EQ2 looks like ass

[Meiva]

I think you helped me pinpoint my disdain for EQ2. I expected EQ 2.0 and got EQ2. EQ2 did not feel like Everquest.

[98bcobra]

I kinda enjoyed EQ2 but it never really was the same appeal as EQ1 to me. PvP was fun with all the different builds you could make like the melee warden.

[Canelek]

They didn't get around to fixing most of EQ2 until the first expansion or so, so vanilla would be terrible.

EQ2 was pretty fun, despite the more WoW-like model where quests took the place of grinding mobs for experience. I suppose that can be considered a good thing, but it really did put the game on rails a bit.

I loved the classes and ability to do fairly long quests to switch faction to get the race/class combos you like. The models, capes, mounts and armor were well done as well. Epic weapon particle effects were cool for the most part. Brigand comes to mind.

Raids were thoughtful and challenging! Most raids required guilds to practice encounters a ton before beginning to be successful. Veeshan's Peak comes to mind in Kunark, and there were some doozy encounters in subsequent expansions all the way up until...



...Velious, where they broke the game by completely re-itemizing and changing the statistical mechanics. So, all the tricked-out cool BiS raid gear you have? Pretty much null and void for your slog to the next level cap. Of course, equipment replacement on a new level cap is inevitable, but BiS previously had enough overlap to give you a leg up on the next set of raid encounters.

Blah blah blah, many folks ended their EQ2 adventures there. I am sure there was some cool stuff in there, but with that abrupt end to meaningful progression, there just wasn't much of a carrot to keep chasing.

Player housing and guild housing/features were fun, as was the tradeskill system (after they fixed a few death bugs (yes, death bugs)).

Most of the raid content was instanced, so most of the competition was progress-based as opposed to simply all content going towards the zergiest or unemployediest. There was open world stuff to kill, but it wasn't required for gear progression.

PvP was instanced and really fun (IMO) once they implemented and fixed. It also eventually had special gear you could purchase using a PVP-dollars sort of mechanism, which was perfect for alts to gear up. I'm not sure how regular server-PVP went as I never tried.

[Zekayy]

Will it be just as buggy and terrible as the real EQ2 release? :p
There is a reason it never got super popular.

Also this thread belongs in Off Topic. Server Chat is for Everquest and Project 1999 discussion. everquest 2 Does Not Equal everquest.

Nah it wont be as buggy due to the p99 staff and stuff running this so well, the reason I didnt put it in off topic is because I asked how about when p99 is done with its timeline we get a classic eq 2 from the gms/devs here, I think it could breathe new life into the server for the people that want something different or new and fresh I realize it would take along while to do and its not going to happen overnight but it is something to think about

[Zekayy]

Would support... but they released a true progression server with original coding a couple of years ago. They'll likely do this regularly.

What? thats cool man didnt know this

[trite]

I tried playing Everquest II beta, was bored after 2 hours and went back to playing everquest 1...There is something more immersive about being able to KS somebody even though you shouldn't...an instanced world with rules that can't be broken isn't very immersive....

[Mblake81]

I think you helped me pinpoint my disdain for EQ2. I expected EQ 2.0 and got EQ2. EQ2 did not feel like Everquest.


The late 90's. RPG world that you do video game stuff in. Reasons we old timers rant on translocator NPCs and taking the tunnel for a bazaar. There was never a place to sell, people gathered. On other servers they did it in Greater Faydark. P99 has hooked me on the single server experience. I was talking with a guy in the tunnel earlier and he mentioned his looking forward to Pantheon (new EQ) and I wished him the best.

[Swish2]

Is it still really badly optimized?

[Bummey]

I just want to collect all the shinies

[Foxplay]

Eq2 sucked wouldn't care at all

[HalflingWarrior]

Is it still really badly optimized?

Unfortunately its the game engine itself. It runs on one CPU core and no more. Last time i tried it, even w a 4790k @ 4.5ghz and a gtx 780, I was stuck at like 45fps tops around other players.

[DinoTriz]

Never liked EQ2.

Doesn't it have playable pixies?

Yikes.

[Lunababy]

EQ2 is just a bad game. Would not play.

[Thisone]

There was some serious balancing issues with pvp for a long while after launch. I remember playing an assassin character and having a 5, 10, or maybe it was a 20 minute cool down "assassinate" ability that I could use in pvp. It essentially would one shot anyone near my level.

[Dollar]

Everquest 2 was .. really just kind of shit. I liked the traitor aspect. I played an ogre warrior named Funeral that defected to the other side. Main tanked all of the initial content and several of the mobs didn't even have a loot table at the time.

Hated how mobs were locked to the person/group with 'FTE'.

Basically decided to try WoW after first couple months of EQ2 and that very day, it was obvious WoW was just so far superior. In less than 3 weeks, everyone from that guild (top guild on the server) moved to WoW and recreated our guild on there.

I mean we all shit on WoW now, but at the time it was very new innovative..and simple a lot more fun than EQ2.

I am sure they made a ton of changed to EQ2 since then, but the game play just wasn't fun. Would not go back.

[FungusTrooper]

I LOVED the traitor gimmick. I had a Ratonga PAL called Pinto Pinto. Riding a light grey horse with shining silver armor.. with a dirty rat tail poking out. Loved it so much.

I also liked the gathering/super complicated tradeskill system, even though I never got far with it.

Everything else was pretty meh.

[Firenze]

Tried to give EQ2 a solid go, but unfortunately the lore wasn't enough to keep me playing. I loved what they did with the cities and different races, but the game was nearly unplayable for me. :(

[Zekayy]

Bump I appericate the support and thoughts in this thread sounds like its 50/50 some dont like the idea but some do

[Evia]

Eq2 is so bad. I have returned to “give it another chance” probably 10 or so times through the years. I always end up quitting in under a month and always for the exact same reason....

The actual act of playing the game is fucking boring. The gameplay concept was nearly identical to wow, but I enjoyed wow. I’m not sure exactly why logging in and advancing my character is just a total drag but it is.

[Meiva]

I wouldn't say it's 50/50 Zekayy. I believe the consensus is quite clear. It would seem we all had high hopes for EQ2. It wasn't executed well. It was unfinished and likely rushed to compete with WoW. Blizzard did it better during that era of our EQ high.

[Sinistria]

I played it a lot and i think it had many nice things.
The Zones i liked a lot. Yeah, everything was very different then i was used to from EQ but it had potential to become a nice game.
Nektulos, Fallen Gate, Splitpaw.
All very beautiful.
But the dungeons had to much room and made it to easy to play there.
And yes, they tried to much to make it like Wow or other games. In fact, like all newer games are. They are to easy, to fast to play (not even time to chat with somebody during meditation), The world felt to small due way to fast traveling.
It was to much buttons to click, to much spells you can have all up, no CRs, no EXP-loss.
All the newer games have the same problems. They are way to easy, death has no consequences so people don't learn how to play their classes properly or its to much about optimizing with hundreds of skills an buttons.
EQ is easier to learn but harder to master, has a nice community and is slowed down. its more a RPG made from oldschool pen & paper players.
Other games have more the mechanic of Diablo. kill kill kill loot loot loot no downtime...

What else to say? I was remembering all those years back to EQ-experiences and now i am giving it a shot again. That tells everything i think (like i still play UO on a freeshard from time to time, still the best MMORPG next to EQ. (even if its complete different mechanics)

Thats makes me remember the noob comics. I so loved them.
Everybody who played EQ or UO should read them.

[elwing]

The good bad about eq2:
The good:
EQ lore.
Wow era hand holding for quest, maps and so on...
The bad:
Not fun like wow.
No open world feeling like classic eq with all the quest logs, collections and such...

An interesting try, but not as good as eq and not as fun as wow, a fail attempt...
Vanguard was much more interesting attempt in my opinion

[Sicc]

I would only play if they reverted the graphics and sounds back to launch. It was so pleasing to spam regens with my warden and fury with the green rings and that deep bass-y wwwooooooaaaahhhhh sound. God I miss that.

[Just facts]

How does the idea of a classic EQ II server sound after p99 blue reaches its final patch I know I would love something like this, I would love to hear your thought.

EQ2 start Corps run was so bad that after a while they changed policy so one could petition to have a guide summon your corps, plus the exp penalties...

I don't think many people on this server would want to experience that.

[Ezrick]

I very much enjoyed EQ2 to a point. Looking back, it was a bit on rails up until level 30 or so. You could easily get more xp from completing quests than just grinding xp.

The locked encounters were good if, like me, you hate morons (/yell unlocked the encounter if you wanted to ask for help). So kill stealing and most other things some think of as "competition" in a PVE game were mostly eliminated. There were still some contested mobs at the raid level if that's your thing, but they were few and my guild mostly ignored them.

Raids were awesome though and, by extension, so were guilds. 24 players max. Period. That was all that could enter the largest raid encounters. No zergs allowed. Be good, or die. It separated the good players from the average. It also managed your guild for you. A good guild was no more than 30 of the best around. Even then we sometimes had to turn guild members back at the entrance to an encounter.

This would, of course, drive the average P99 raider bonkers. "What???? We cant have 17 clerics in a 1.5 second rotation?" ! It would totally screw them. No you couldn't pull a dragon to a zone line.

Almost no contested raiding spawns, but almost no guilds could truly raid the toughest encounters (there were only three on Kithicor and the third was iffy at best).

I can see where some wouldn't like it, but if you were at the top of it, it was a lot of fun.

[Mblake81]

This would, of course, drive the average P99 raider bonkers. "What???? We cant have 17 clerics in a 1.5 second rotation?" ! It would totally screw them. No you couldn't pull a dragon to a zone line.

sandbox MMO

[clacbec]

I played on nagafen server, good time. Also crafting pre nerf was fun

[shuklak]

Rather hold on for pantheon... eq2 is the reason we came back to eq1.

[Zekayy]

Bump....

[Zekayy]

Rather hold on for pantheon... eq2 is the reason we came back to eq1.

going to be waiting along while

[Foxplay]

Don't forget after the long wait there is also the possibility of it being a bad game...

I thought eq2 was going to be amazing but even going into it with high expectations the younger me was amazed at how a newer game could be worse infact way worse than it's predecessor

[Swish2]

I'd consider EQ2 again as long as they put the group XP death penalty back in (someone dies, everyone loses XP).

[Foxplay]

I very much enjoyed EQ2 to a point. Looking back, it was a bit on rails up until level 30 or so. You could easily get more xp from completing quests than just grinding xp.

The locked encounters were good if, like me, you hate morons (/yell unlocked the encounter if you wanted to ask for help). So kill stealing and most other things some think of as "competition" in a PVE game were mostly eliminated. There were still some contested mobs at the raid level if that's your thing, but they were few and my guild mostly ignored them.

Raids were awesome though and, by extension, so were guilds. 24 players max. Period. That was all that could enter the largest raid encounters. No zergs allowed. Be good, or die. It separated the good players from the average. It also managed your guild for you. A good guild was no more than 30 of the best around. Even then we sometimes had to turn guild members back at the entrance to an encounter.

This would, of course, drive the average P99 raider bonkers. "What???? We cant have 17 clerics in a 1.5 second rotation?" ! It would totally screw them. No you couldn't pull a dragon to a zone line.

Almost no contested raiding spawns, but almost no guilds could truly raid the toughest encounters (there were only three on Kithicor and the third was iffy at best).

I can see where some wouldn't like it, but if you were at the top of it, it was a lot of fun.

Sorry but the idea that raid caps make raids instantly "hard" is drinking the Kool aid retarded. All it does it let the developer more closely tailor the encounter to a more predictable limitation I order to tune the difficulty. You can still have easy raids and overtuned raids with raid caps. Its a set lazy control by Dev teams in order to theme park raid content

To say a game with no raid caps can't be hard is also dellusional.... On p99 it's been figured out for over a decade with prior game knowledge. But getting 80+ ppl together without wanting to throw your computer monitor out of the window is a challenge in itself

[MagpieRockyl]

GAME LOOKS LIKE SHIT

[Valakut]

eq2 vanilla was whats up. no need for progression.

[Bessy]

Playing on eqII progression pvp server was really awesome when Nizzar was the Leader. We ruled the server. But i have a family now and cant really bathphone and pvp over a raid mob for a coupe of hours.

[ibetweenk]

i got my 2nd best cyber sex in eq2. 1 time i was a very pretty, lithe 14yo effete,& i had brought my pc to a friends house & wound up like stealth on the floor dizzy off my older internet man with him in the room

[Darksinga]

I loved eq2 pvp.

Granted, I was always about the low-mid range game, my Brigand was capped at level 32. Would just log in and pvp (you could actually earn XP off pvp, lol.)

One of my top memories was killing some noob in the Peat Bogg (sewers type zone for evils to enter into Qeynos,) and this guy had 10 plat on him (plat was huge in EQ2, unlike how it is in EQ1.)

1 Plat back then was the equivalent to thousands of plat for EQ1, so imagine killing some one on a brand new server, and looting 10k.

Was glorious, and I miss vanilla EQ2 pvp!

[Wonkie]

a plat exploit ruined every eq2 servers economy on launch. something to do with companion pets?

anyway i liked killing bears in the first zone and would sub a month to do that then quit

[Rick Sanchez]

i played up to TSO expansion and overall enjoyed enough.

[Zekayy]

Bump

[Bisonzabi]

How does the idea of a classic EQ II server sound after p99 blue reaches its final patch I know I would love something like this, I would love to hear your thought.

Augh it's hard to really tell if an EQ2 server would be any good or not. I played the game from 2004-2014, it had its ups and down. Features that were needed and some features that were not needed at all. EQ2 at launch was a rushed game and the gameplay mechanics were changed constantly over the course of the following 2 years. Some of the mechanics were grind sake for the pure purpose of stretching out the content, the type of grind that was frowned upon in SoL/GoD expansions in EQ1 such as 'EVERYONE NEEDS A QUEST COMPLETED TO GAIN ACCESS TO EVERY SINGLE OVERLAND/CONTESTED/INSTANCE ZONE' That was fucking bullshit and you basically had to spend time each night helping someone complete an access quest just to dungeon crawl. So I guess it comes down to, what era of EQ2? Because within six months the game was already drastically different in particular aspects that were added. Or is this DoF or KoS EQ2 we're talking about? Usually the people who talk shit about the game are the ones who didn't play it during the golden era of raiding which was EoF-SF (expansion 3-6) and brushed it off during beta or launch. I would definitely say the raid bosses got harder and harder over the course of time as pre-EoF was primarily just tank and spank mechanics with a few exceptions like The Djinn Master.

My favorite period was unironically Shadow Oddyessy due to the raid content on top of Rise of Kunark. Sure, RoK did indeed fuck up the status by giving everyone ridiculous stat bonuses on weapons/armor such as increased crit (RIP unique Berserker status) for practically everything.
Character
https://u.eq2wire.com/soe/character_detail/871878775191
Also god damn has the power creep gone crazy in the past 3 years. Back when I retired once SoE became DBG I had around 500,000-750,000hp (depending on offense/defense gear I had) now the average 110 player has 50,000,000-80,000,000hp

The game was a fucking nightmare in optimization though. SoE dropped the ball hard and really fucked up with making the game CPU oriented rather than taking advantage of the GPU. They assumed Intel would keep making single core CPU's and within a year of its launch Duo Core's were a thing and the game didn't utilize multi-core CPU's until years later and it was only for certain graphical enhancements, not all. So the game ran like shit and looked like shit in 2004 unless you could play Medium if you had a Pentium 4 HT 3.2ghz+ CPU. Though even artistically vanilla EQ2 looked like shit, they all that cool as fuck conceprt art for weapons/armor in loading screens yet NONE of it was in the game. Wonderful baiting SoE. Bravo.

[Bisonzabi]

Didn't read

don't care

[Zekayy]

bump

[beargryllz]

EQ2 lasted about 2 weeks because WoW came out in the same month of the same year

[Mblake81]

EQ2 lasted about 2 weeks because WoW came out in the same month of the same year

WoW is coming and it will destroy the genre. Nothing will be able to survive afterwards that doesn't resemble it, even Diablo.

[Zekayy]

Bump

[Bisonzabi]

EQ2 lasted about 2 weeks because WoW came out in the same month of the same year

SoE legit believed they could go toe to toe with Blizzard. The best part is that SoE never learned their lesson from any of their mistakes and just kept doing what they did. The top raid guild leaders of EQ1 complain about the quality of the overall game and primarily Shadow of Luclin and SoE laughs it off and dismisses them just for all of them to go to join WoW's development team and beat the shit out of SoE. I'm so glad this company is nearing its death.

[Zekayy]

Bump

[trite]

I don't think WoW killed EQ2. EQ2 just wasn't a very good game. It wasn't a piece of art like EQ1. It was a for profit endeavor, that incorporated a lot of untested and bad ideas from the get go. I played beta for a couple days and never had the urge to play again (and never played WoW either). From the moment i went to try to FTE a gnoll before another player and the game enforced the FTE, the immersion was gone........

[Danth]

How does the idea of a classic EQ II server sound after p99 blue reaches its final patch I know I would love something like this, I would love to hear your thought.

The notion of "Classic EQ II" seems to me akin to someone trying to talk about a Classic Ford Tempo. I suppose beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Preference aside, I think you'd have to convince somebody else to make it. If the recent length of P1999 patch cycles is any indicator the folks here seem pretty burnt out.


Danth

[Bisonzabi]

It wasn't a piece of art like EQ1.

What was artistic about EQ1 outside of being a run of the mill D&D campaign?

[Ezrick]

Sorry but the idea that raid caps make raids instantly "hard" is drinking the Kool aid retarded. All it does it let the developer more closely tailor the encounter to a more predictable limitation I order to tune the difficulty. You can still have easy raids and overtuned raids with raid caps. Its a set lazy control by Dev teams in order to theme park raid content

To say a game with no raid caps can't be hard is also dellusional.... On p99 it's been figured out for over a decade with prior game knowledge. But getting 80+ ppl together without wanting to throw your computer monitor out of the window is a challenge in itself

On Tarew Marr there were only two raiding guilds all the way through Luclin. I'm not even sure there were other guilds who could do NTOV when PoP came out. If you weren't in Black Company or Enlightened Dark you never seriously challenged the high end game.

After PoP was released I took a long break, about 8 months then returned. I was invited to a new guild and went to my first raid. There were 88 people. Eighty fucking eight people on a single raid. That's not a raid, that's a zerg. I remember killing Seru the first time on our server with 23. Black Company didn't have 50 full time active players in the whole guild, certainly never more the 35-40 at any given raid.

So yeah, a mechanic that cut out the zerg rush to content was a pretty refreshing thing to see in EQ2.

And yeah, pulling shit to the zone with 10kpp worth of expendables, and 18 cleric chain and 70 or more people to kill it (only after having practiced it all on your own test server) gets absolutely less than zero respect from me. The only skill displayed is the pullers and only then with a hundred clicky crutches to prop them up.

[Bisonzabi]

EQ2's raid content was top tier during RoK-TSO. Sentinel's Fate and beyond were good as well but as someone stated earlier in this thread, BiS shit was rendered moot by Destiny of Velious with every future expansion being a hard reset for gear which was bullshit and there was some heavy bullshit zones such as Plane Of War that only .01% of the raid community fully experienced. Still though, it sucks many here had their perspectives tainted by the lackluster raid content that the game offered at launch. EQ2's endgame for launch along with Desert of Flames and Kingdom Of Sky had pretty basic tank and spank content with some exceptions scattered here and there such as Djinn Master in DoF. All other major raid bosses were pretty much specific gear centric (use clubs to do melee damage to Darathar) rather than including complex scripts that required heavily coordinated teamwork to overcome that would be included in later expansions.


After some reading and videos its the same guk instances no one went to which are now max level and offer 3 modes, regular heroic and frenzied. I watched the videos and its the most boring game ever.

The Guk instances from TSO? Those were good back in the day. But what you said is the very reason why I quit the game around 3+ years ago. EQ2 team is a skeleton crew and most of their "new" content is mostly just revamped or reused assets and zones from prior expansions. They've done this over and over in the past 5 years.

[Zekayy]

Bump

[Schaduwridder]

daybreak is merging the latest eq2 progression server with Antonius bale very soon

new one will most likely come out shortly but they are subscription required servers

[Zekayy]

Bump

[Schaduwridder]

why would you bump this