Original eq2 was a great game

[brokenpromise]

Since we like to have disagreements here on p99, I thought I'd add a little more debate

Eq2 up to a certain point was a very fun and great game. I often played both eq1 and eq2 and was often torn which to play. I will always be partial to eqs art and lore style. I grew up playing both games. I played warcraft very, very loosely. I have no problems with wow, I'm just an EQ dude.

How does this community feel about eq2? Something tells it's not good


Inc comments like something something not classic and cat dicks on the moon

[Danth]

Can't say, never played it. Played Warcraft instead, and Vanguard later on. I've always heard mixed opinions with respect to EQ2. I almost totally ignored EQ2's existence. Not even its fault....by 2004 I was pretty fed up with Sony more generally. I never even gave it a chance. I suspect I was not alone in that mindset.

Danth

[Deathrydar]

I played it for exactly two weeks......Do you know what happened exactly two weeks after EQ launched?

World of Warcraft launched.

EQ2 was really bad, in my opinion. I thought they would build on the old game, but instead, they made a totally new, action style RPG and I hated it. I even built an entirely new computer for the game cause I was so hype for it.

And in the end, I wound up playing WoW for four years. And I didn't need the crazy high end computer that I spent a really ridiculous amount of money on.

[Vivix]

I was enjoying EQ2 crafting and pvp for a bit until they listened to all the whiners and made a bunch of changes. Then loads of people left and it became a ghost town on my server so I quit too and moved to wow. The cycle repeated in any mmo I tried so I took a long break from them.

[Jimjam]

By EQ2 i guess OP means WoW, the spiritual successor to EQ?

(Just like how Path of Exile is the real Diablo III).

[brokenpromise]

Can't say, never played it. Played Warcraft instead, and Vanguard later on. I've always heard mixed opinions with respect to EQ2. I almost totally ignored EQ2's existence. Not even its fault....by 2004 I was pretty fed up with Sony more generally. I suspect I was not alone in that mindset.

Danth

A shame. Original eq2 was really amazing. Awesome lore, graphics, art and combat. Questing for classic items like ghoulbane, fbss, bonebladed claymore. Up to a certain point eq2 was something special. I even liked it more than velious era, which says a lot

[Kennie]

Really fun, I still log in from time to time just to roam the nostalgic areas. Did most of the fabled item quests. Guild hall still looks great.

[brokenpromise]

I played it for exactly two weeks......Do you know what happened exactly two weeks after EQ launched?

World of Warcraft launched.

EQ2 was really bad, in my opinion. I thought they would build on the old game, but instead, they made a totally new, action style RPG and I hated it. I even built an entirely new computer for the game cause I was so hype for it.

And in the end, I wound up playing WoW for four years. And I didn't need the crazy high end computer that I spent a really ridiculous amount of money on.

Action style rpg? I mean I guess. Going from eq1 to eq2 I can see why you say that, but wasnt wows combat considerably faster than eqs?

[brokenpromise]

By EQ2 i guess OP means WoW, the spiritual successor to EQ?

(Just like how Path of Exile is the real Diablo III).

Theres nothing wrong with warcraft. I like warcraft. But no I dont mean wow. I mean eq2 and the communities thoughts

[brokenpromise]

Really fun, I still log in from time to time just to roam the nostalgic areas. Did most of the fabled item quests. Guild hall still looks great.

I think my favorite time in eq2 was kingdom of sky. I loved fighting all the dragons and lore

[Mblake81]

https://i.imgur.com/8cITVU5.jpg

[Vormotus]

I actually enjoyed EQ2 but it was never the same as EQ1.

I was one of the few weirdos that migrated out of the TEST Server back in 2003/2004 and left behind my alliance, led at that time by the infamous Sinbash, leader of the Botsquad.

I was looking for something new and with more people (I practically knew everybody in test and even talked on the phone with some on long distance calls from Venezuela to USA ... Yep I was strange, but arent we all to a certain degree?) and with something new to do.

In Hindsight though, when I was playing EQ2 and began suffering the crapfest of SHARED XP LOSS and the silly /pizza command to try to "compete" with WoW I knew right away It was not EQ but something related to it.

SO yeah I enjoyed EQ2 , heck I even have, alongside all my EQ1 RPG Core books the rareish EQ2 roleplaying game out of nostalgia.

It was a good game, extremely clunky at best but the whole idea of player housing, moving furniture and then when time passed AAs to emulate some of the good old EQ1 system, it became a bit better.

If this is a trolling thread, so be it, but I enjoyed it ... but after 2 decades, I am here still and not on an eq2 shard or official server playing it.

I have tried hard to not come here and play a bit with my druid and alts but this stuff is like a HARD DRUG.

I guess as I grow older nostalgia burdens me with its twilight embrace, but please, do not be hard on me .. I am exiled out of my own country and if I look at it from a certain perspective, Playing EQ1 back in my little basement in Venezuela is the only thing that brings good memories that I can tap into at any time when being online.

So I do not know about you all, but related to OPs thread, yes, EQ2 was fun, in as much as it was "something" that budded off EQ1 .

In short EQ2 was good only because of it being composed by things EQ1 not for it being a game ... for me at least.

Love to everyone from the Lonely Isthmus!

[El-Hefe]

I liked EQ2 a lot.

But just like everything else, Sony ruined it in a couple years.

Once they got rid of neighborhoods in Qeynos and Freeport, and made everyone start in Kunark, Felwithe and Neriak the game totally lost it's charm.

[Jauna]

I remember having lots of soul shards in blackburrow with no way to get them back and every soul shard i could not get back made more soul shards.

then i went back to wow

[brokenpromise]

I actually enjoyed EQ2 but it was never the same as EQ1.

I was one of the few weirdos that migrated out of the TEST Server back in 2003/2004 and left behind my alliance, led at that time by the infamous Sinbash, leader of the Botsquad.

I was looking for something new and with more people (I practically knew everybody in test and even talked on the phone with some on long distance calls from Venezuela to USA ... Yep I was strange, but arent we all to a certain degree?) and with something new to do.

In Hindsight though, when I was playing EQ2 and began suffering the crapfest of SHARED XP LOSS and the silly /pizza command to try to "compete" with WoW I knew right away It was not EQ but something related to it.

SO yeah I enjoyed EQ2 , heck I even have, alongside all my EQ1 RPG Core books the rareish EQ2 roleplaying game out of nostalgia.

It was a good game, extremely clunky at best but the whole idea of player housing, moving furniture and then when time passed AAs to emulate some of the good old EQ1 system, it became a bit better.

If this is a trolling thread, so be it, but I enjoyed it ... but after 2 decades, I am here still and not on an eq2 shard or official server playing it.

I have tried hard to not come here and play a bit with my druid and alts but this stuff is like a HARD DRUG.

I guess as I grow older nostalgia burdens me with its twilight embrace, but please, do not be hard on me .. I am exiled out of my own country and if I look at it from a certain perspective, Playing EQ1 back in my little basement in Venezuela is the only thing that brings good memories that I can tap into at any time when being online.

So I do not know about you all, but related to OPs thread, yes, EQ2 was fun, in as much as it was "something" that budded off EQ1 .

In short EQ2 was good only because of it being composed by things EQ1 not for it being a game ... for me at least.

Love to everyone from the Lonely Isthmus!

Not a troll thread. I really do love old eq2 up til kingdom of sky possibly a little later. Eq2 had some really good amazing things about it. Player housing was cool. I love the art, combat and lore of eq2. A lot of great things about it.

Remember how they did spells and combat skills? If you put in the time, money and effort you could upgrade your spells and gear. It set you apart from other players. A player who had all adept 3s and at least master crafted gear was leaps and bounds better and probably more experienced than one that was not. It showed you put real time in your character

Edited: mobile

[soronil]

I too loved my time in EQ2. I played a high elf wizard that went through the grind to betray to being a warlock and thought that was cool. I liked the world graphics (models were ok).

I joined a guild, made some great friends, for a while we ran Nektropos Castle pretty much every night. Even disabled exp so that we didn't out level the rest of our guild and didn't really mind.

I quit after the first expansion. Eventually discovered WoW. Definitely a better game, but EQ2 had its charms.

[Ferahgo]

I quit EQ1 around 2000 and played DAoC at its release and never looked back. Eventually I found my way to EQ2 and my favorite part about the game was finding familiar lore from EQ1 which I revered but never played again till finding P99. I got sucked into EQ2 and played it pretty regularly, even got my girlfriend at the time (now wife) to play the game and she wasn't into gaming at all. We joined a casual raid guild but never really got into it too deep. It was a lot of fun when they allowed you to lock your characters level so you could experience ALL the progression content without out leveling it.

I did give up on the game but mostly because at that time I was big into building my computers. I spent a fortune on one just for EQ2 hoping I could max everything out and run the game smooth but the game wasn't optimized to utilize high end (expensive) video cards. The graphics I guess would utilize CPU rather than GPU... well this drove me crazy to the point I quit entirely.

My wife still logs in now and then to play the seasonal events and to look at the house she spent countless hours furnishing.

[JayDee]

Was nice to see different versions of zones we have become familiar with over the years. Being able to exile any race/class was definitely interesting. I had an ogre monk which was probably the dumbest move considering how strong bruisers were. But he sure did stand out :)

Pvp was also fun if you happened to get all of your fabled/masters before everyone else.

[reznor_]

Since we like to have disagreements here on p99, I thought I'd add a little more debate

Eq2 up to a certain point was a very fun and great game. I often played both eq1 and eq2 and was often torn which to play. I will always be partial to eqs art and lore style. I grew up playing both games. I played warcraft very, very loosely. I have no problems with wow, I'm just an EQ dude.

How does this community feel about eq2? Something tells it's not good


Inc comments like something something not classic and cat dicks on the moon

EQ2 was fucking badass until T8 came, imo. I loved that game so, so much. If there was an EQ2 emu server up to T7 with enough players to have a few competitive raid guilds, I would drop p99 in a heartbeat.

[Rooj]

There were some unique things I liked about EQ2, such as the Mastery DD Nuke that everyone got by collecting different body parts of different species. Being able to be any class/race combination, which is something I've wanted in EQ1 for forever - even being able to take an evil race and convert it to good. I liked that it was a continuation of the EQ1 story, and you'd still see stuff like the Ghost of Holly Windstalker roaming around wrecking people. It also had an interesting take on crafting, where you could actually die, and still has some of the best player housing to date.

However, the game was poooooorly optimized. It ran like crap. And while I liked the character and monster models, the terrain and environments were kind of meh. I hated Freeport. The game's population never really took off. And of course, it was a WoW clone (it's just the term we use, doesn't matter that it came out first). Run from camp to camp mostly solo questing, with button spam combat. At the very least the dungeons were an actual crawl, and not just an instance run that you reset over and over. It was still a more social game than WoW was though.

[Chortles Snort|eS]

https://i.imgur.com/5tehjuN.jpg

[Trzzle]

EQ2 from launch until the end of Sentinel's Fate was the greatest MMO ever made. Sadly it suffered a full item/stat/mechanic revamp that murdered the game thanks to Smokejumper. Pretty much died overnight similar to how people talk about that Starwars Galaxy update that ruined that game.

[Canelek]

EQ2 had really fun and challenging raids, interesting classes, faction "betrayal" quests and a few other fun bits. I played for a couple years between the Kunark and Velious launches (there were expansions in between those two).

Leveling was trivial though, so it just didn't have the "challenge" of making it to the end. That said, leveling was a helluva a lot more fun than anything WoW put out (at the time, and, well, now kind of).

Collection rewards were fun, epic weapons were fairly challenging to get and mostly had cool particle effects.

But, EQ2 hemorrhaged players once Velious dropped. They had managed to change enough about the game to make it so it just wasn't worth it to continue as a raider.

[bloodmuffin]

EQ2 was made with Bryce 3d Engine and had the visual appeal of a petrified, poopy, cum sock. Same with vanguard, whoever liked that "art" style is obviously retarded.

[Naethyn]

EQ2 had a terrible launch. Buggy and unplayable. I had a good machine and my computer could hardly run it. My group of friends tried to make EQ2 work on launch but we went to wow a month later and had a blast. I went back to EQ2 years later and it was super fun. A final Froglok word is the longest quest I've ever done in any game. And the lore was amazing to learn more about EQ in general.

[Mistle]

Bad engine. The detail was extremely high but the models were beyond atrocious (though still better than Luclin models), animations were terrible, and the game ran like crap because they bet on the wrong computer advancements.

Bad systems/mechanics. I remember my high elf shadowknight had like 20 abilities that she just used one by one, with them starting to come off cooldown just as the last one was hit, in time to just do them all again. There was no thought involved with any of them, you just hit them all.

It had some good ideas but it was a poorly made game overall.

[FungusTrooper]

I loved some of the ideas the game brought to the table. I loved the class system, I loved the races being tied to a faction, and I LOVED the betrayal system. Holy shit man, making a Ratonga Shadowknight then betraying and becoming a shiny dirty rat paladin on a white horse

no other MMO has topped that yet


edit: oh yeah i also liked the awful crafting system where you had to like.. make 4 legs, then a back, then craft them all into 1 chair. like, it was awful, but what a great idea. if it was implemented better i think it woulda been great.

[fastboy21]

EQ2 failed for the same reason that EQNext died: John Smedley.

The man had no understanding about what made EQ such a success deep down. He flopped like a fish again and again trying to leverage his EQ success into something else...and he just can't do it.

The details matter...but his leadership never produced good results the last decade he was the CEO.

EQ2 has had success, but mostly not from the die-hard EQ folks who flocked to it the first few weeks after launch. The EQ1 players mostly left (either to WoW or back to EQ and later Vanguard)...and eventually some fresh players made their way into EQ2 and liked it for what it is. Most of that generation of players has little or no exposure to EQ1 except on places like p99.

[Crom]

EQ2 had a terrible launch. Buggy and unplayable. I had a good machine and my computer could hardly run it. My group of friends tried to make EQ2 work on launch but we went to wow a month later and had a blast. I went back to EQ2 years later and it was super fun. A final Froglok word is the longest quest I've ever done in any game. And the lore was amazing to learn more about EQ in general.

/this Horrible at launch, plus the death penalty system was...no words for it..they even had to let players know that they staff would help with corps recovery after a few weeks or so due to it being so horrible.

[Mblake81]

I loved some of the ideas the game brought to the table. I loved the class system, I loved the races being tied to a faction, and I LOVED the betrayal system. Holy shit man, making a Ratonga Shadowknight then betraying and becoming a shiny dirty rat paladin on a white horse

no other MMO has topped that yet.

Jeezus, playing a humanoid rat. Almost as bad as Dark Elf fish person. The classes were EQ classes that were split up iirc. No other game had classes as powerful as EQ while also getting your face stomped by a low con.

Anything EQ related with a horse or parkour.. :o

Did you guys ever read the Forgotten Realms book about the two furry footed hobbits that jumped around the roof tops of Freeport?

https://i.imgur.com/y46UGOE.gif

[Rooj]

Oh, something I forgot to add in my post: the mentor system. The idea was great - being able to sync your level down so you could party with anyone, while also still getting some experience. Named mobs in EQ2 were marked with an icon if you'd never killed them before, and doing so would give a large chunk of AA experience, so running old lower level dungeons was actually beneficial. But mentors weren't anywhere close to being nerfed to the point they should've been. Having a mentor pretty much guaranteed that all you'd be doing in the run was trying to loot corpses fast enough to keep up.

[Danth]

Someone in the thread said something about "shared death penalties." Having never played (and barely paid attention to the existence of) EQ2, is that mechanic the griefer-gold it sounds like?

Danth

[Verityn]

I liked EQ2 a lot.

But just like everything else, Sony ruined it in a couple years.

Once they got rid of neighborhoods in Qeynos and Freeport, and made everyone start in Kunark, Felwithe and Neriak the game totally lost it's charm.

When the game first launched and Freeport was just super crowded I loved it even though my computer couldn't run it at all. I kind of liked that you leveled up to 10 in town and had a house that you furnished. It felt like my character lived there and his job was cleaning the sewers.

[Modwolf]

My only memory of eq2 was my friends getting banned for exploiting something to produce a high score for their guild. I'm not sure what it could of been as I barely got far into eq2. Wow was our destination before any expansion.

[PieOats]

Someone in the thread said something about "shared death penalties." Having never played (and barely paid attention to the existence of) EQ2, is that mechanic the griefer-gold it sounds like?

Danth

Its utility in that regard was limited. You accrued xp debt, which capped at 280% iirc.

[kerafym]

The greatest thing about EQ2 was eq2flames.com :D

[Cen]

Eq2 had a demo so I played the demo. It rubbed me the wrong way

[tpgramlich]

I actually thoroughly enjoyed EQ2 at launch. I adored the fact that I could create a Troll Bard. Then, completing the exile quest to switch from Freeport to Qeynos while only following a loose outline of how to do so was one of the best MMO questing experiences I've ever gone through. When the leader of the city showed up in the sewers to personally kill my traitorous ass and leave me exiled with no way to recover that soul shard and the daunting task of making the trek all the way to Qeynos to even begin the process of redeeming myself by killing 100 gnolls, it was awesome. Once it was complete, to be basically the only Troll Bard roaming around Qeynos felt really special.

Yeah, the combat was kinda spammy, but I did enjoy stunning a mob, then jumping over it to backstab it. That never got old for me. They also did a great job tying in a whole lot of the EQ1 lore.

Hell, as much hate as everyone gives the cats on the moon, I'd think people would love EQ2 simply for the fact that they literally blew up Luclin. :D

[Halfcell]

I did not play EQ 2 for long. I remember rolling a.... coercer? Whatever the Enchanter class was, and I remember being very frustrated that groups of mobs were linked so they could not be singled or split, and I quit soon thereafter.

The best MMO ever made, excepting EQ was pre F2P Rift. That game was amazing, and if Trion were not the worst software company on earth it could have been every bit as big as WoW.

[Tethler]

I played it to 50. I was like the 4th or 5th Dirge on my server to hit cap according to the webside tracker they had. Quit shortly after for WoW.

[Secrets]

EQ2 failed for the same reason that EQNext died: John Smedley.

Shut your goddamn mouth. John Smedley is the only reason you're actually posting on this forum right now and not seeing a "FBI seized this website" message. The guy actually was the driving force that wanted to see EQEmulator live on because he cared about the game. He's met with Rogean and nilbog at multiple EQ-related events in real life, and you better believe he's for the 'common person'. Several Cease and Desist letters would have moved on to action taken against EQClassic, EQEmulator and Project 1999 if it wasn't for him. He's also the reason the Daybreak agreement exists.

The reason why he's not considered a good businessman is because he cared about his consumers too much.

He's had to make some really rough decisions over the years. One of those was shutting down SWG, which was beyond his control. LucasArts actually wanted to kill Star Wars Galaxies because 'it wasn't like WoW' and not bringing in the people that they wanted to cater to. They had a year to shut the game down after NGE failed at doing that. I personally worked with SWG's old community manager during my first job in industry and the horror stories I have heard do not include John Smedley. If there was an example of someone who was an outside-the-box thinker, it would be about Smed.

Smokejumper (Dave Georgeson), on the other hand, was a shady, F2P-snake-oil salesman which is why EQNext never took off.

You take that back about John Smedley right now.

[Swish2]

Ogre wizards, dark elf paladins... you name the abomination, you can pretty much create it.

I thought that was an awful start, coupled with the fact that you NEEDED a decent PC to run it at the time...without that, the game was so poorly optimized it just wasn't worth the blocky frame rate losses :/

Then yeah, Timmy the stupid-head dies and everyone loses XP...creating elitism in low level areas.

I lasted a month beyond my free trial trying to enjoy it, then quit... and at some point I went to WoW instead.

[Swish2]

EQ2 failed for the same reason that EQNext died: John Smedley.

The man had no understanding about what made EQ such a success deep down. He flopped like a fish again and again trying to leverage his EQ success into something else...and he just can't do it.

The details matter...but his leadership never produced good results the last decade he was the CEO.

EQ2 has had success, but mostly not from the die-hard EQ folks who flocked to it the first few weeks after launch. The EQ1 players mostly left (either to WoW or back to EQ and later Vanguard)...and eventually some fresh players made their way into EQ2 and liked it for what it is. Most of that generation of players has little or no exposure to EQ1 except on places like p99.

Shut your goddamn mouth. John Smedley is the only reason you're actually posting on this forum right now and not seeing a "FBI seized this website" message. The guy actually was the driving force that wanted to see EQEmulator live on because he cared about the game. He's met with Rogean and nilbog at multiple EQ-related events in real life, and you better believe he's for the 'common person'. Several Cease and Desist letters would have moved on to action taken against EQClassic, EQEmulator and Project 1999 if it wasn't for him. He's also the reason the Daybreak agreement exists.

The reason why he's not considered a good businessman is because he cared about his consumers too much.

He's had to make some really rough decisions over the years. One of those was shutting down SWG, which was beyond his control. LucasArts actually wanted to kill Star Wars Galaxies because 'it wasn't like WoW' and not bringing in the people that they wanted to cater to. They had a year to shut the game down after NGE failed at doing that. I personally worked with SWG's old community manager during my first job in industry and the horror stories I have heard do not include John Smedley. If there was an example of someone who was an outside-the-box thinker, it would be about Smed.

Smokejumper (Dave Georgeson), on the other hand, was a shady, F2P-snake-oil salesman which is why EQNext never took off.

You take that back about John Smedley right now.

https://i.imgur.com/qxcCEI8.gif

[Sicc]

God I wish I could play a vanilla eq2 Fury again, with the old graphics/particle effects and sound. Honestly would donate to that project as well.

[sacman08]

Never played EQ2, all my friends stuck with original EQ so did I. Plus I was pretty sure my computer wouldn't be able to run the graphics.

[Sinistria]

I realy like EQ2.
Starting on exile island and then arrive in Freeport.

Getting my first home there and starting to decorate it with items i earned for cleaning out the city from scum.

Pros:
i liked the grafix
lots of very nice quests (not to mention kill XXX mobs, i mean like the one with the woman in the commonlands who fell in love with a ratonga but they weren't allowed to meet each other, or i think, it was a kerran woman)
heritage quests
betrayal quest was great
talking to Nagafen (if he would have known i killed him on EQ1... OMG)
mentor system was great, it wasn't a problem anymore to level out your friends.
always grouping with people you like
nice lowbe dungeons: wailing caves, fallen gate, so beautiful.
nice zones: nektulos forest, Runnyeye and... ahh so many nice zones.
nice raids: Killing Talendor on noob-island.
so many different mounts

cons:
To easy to solo.
button smashing, to much skills and abilities
performance problems with not high end PCs
PvP sucked for casual player. You were ganked from player with AA maxed out but in level range (due to exp locking) plus complete PvP equipped. no chance to survive (EQ1 PvP was more about fighting for spots to camp)
I started on PvE then and had lots of fun.

If there were a freeshard with EQ2 i would definetely give it a try.
Wanted to have a look on EQ2 live but there are some troubles with email adress and account.
(still got emails from them but its not working to contact them with it etc.. weird)

But yes, Freeshard would be great, but we all know thats not gonna happen.

Would be great to play a bit EQ1 and then EQ2, just how the mood is.

[Ferahgo]

All this chatter prompted me to install EQ2 for the first time in many years. Come to find out all my characters have been renamed with an X or a Z due to some merge and the game is nothing like I remember. On top of all that disappointment the game would consistently crash. Was best to leave it where it was I guess!

[Jibartik]

iirc the lore for eq2 is spot on but the art and gameplay was not for me.

Edit: lol yeah secrets is right! I love the gif hahaha

[NegaStoat]

My roommate at the time EQ 2 launched had a much better computer over mine and had specs that could easily handle what was printed as necessary for the game. And its performance on launch day was absolute balls. It was horrid. He returned it within hours on launch day telling the Gamestop employee that the account code was reading as having been previously used and got a full refund which he put towards a purchase of WoW on release.

My computer at the time had been upgraded as I had played EQ, then DAoC, and then City of Heroes & Planetside, and it was in good shape for other games. The performance issues reported with EQ2 and it being a massive resource hog killed my interest. Then World of Warcraft released and it ate my soul.

[Barantor]

Maybe I'm in the minority, but as far as the feel of Everquest I think that Vanguard actually did a better job than EQ2 did, though that is about all that Vanguard did better unfortunately.

[Secrets]

Maybe I'm in the minority, but as far as the feel of Everquest I think that Vanguard actually did a better job than EQ2 did, though that is about all that Vanguard did better unfortunately.

Vanguard had far more technical problems that weren't going to age better with hardware upgrades. EQ2, by today's standards, aged fairly well.

[SirAlvarex]

EQ2 from launch until the end of Sentinel's Fate was the greatest MMO ever made. Sadly it suffered a full item/stat/mechanic revamp that murdered the game thanks to Smokejumper. Pretty much died overnight similar to how people talk about that Starwars Galaxy update that ruined that game.

Agreed. Sentinels Fate was such a fun time to play EQ2 too. Then they changed it so each class only cared about a single stat. Meant there was now no differentiation between items on the same "tier". The inclusion of non-stat enhancements (haste, potency, etc) was the new meta but was 10x more confusion to a new player than the old stats-based itemization.

Shut your goddamn mouth. John Smedley is the only reason you're actually posting on this forum right now and not seeing a "FBI seized this website" message. The guy actually was the driving force that wanted to see EQEmulator live on because he cared about the game. He's met with Rogean and nilbog at multiple EQ-related events in real life, and you better believe he's for the 'common person'. Several Cease and Desist letters would have moved on to action taken against EQClassic, EQEmulator and Project 1999 if it wasn't for him. He's also the reason the Daybreak agreement exists.

The reason why he's not considered a good businessman is because he cared about his consumers too much.

He's had to make some really rough decisions over the years. One of those was shutting down SWG, which was beyond his control. LucasArts actually wanted to kill Star Wars Galaxies because 'it wasn't like WoW' and not bringing in the people that they wanted to cater to. They had a year to shut the game down after NGE failed at doing that. I personally worked with SWG's old community manager during my first job in industry and the horror stories I have heard do not include John Smedley. If there was an example of someone who was an outside-the-box thinker, it would be about Smed.

Smokejumper (Dave Georgeson), on the other hand, was a shady, F2P-snake-oil salesman which is why EQNext never took off.

You take that back about John Smedley right now.

Really happy to see someone else say this. As someone who's been a fan of SOE and their games since the 90s, Smedley gets a lot of shit he doesn't deserve. He always wanted to make the best games possible.

I had no idea Smokejumper was Georgeson. Now it all makes sense, as EQ2 took a deathspiral from a quality perspective when he came onboard.

---

Legacy EQ2 was awesome, tho. It was a good intermediate between EQ and WoW in terms of gameplay and experience. WoW XP gain was way higher than EQ 1/2, the graphics were cartoony, the playerbase was on average 10 years younger, etc.

I think EQ2 was at it's best shortly after the combat revamp. That's what introduced stances and a more even playing field for classes. Classic pet classes, for example, had pets who were better than a fully buffed tank at times. The revamp also got most of the base guidelines that EQ2 held onto for the next 13+ years.

I don't miss crafting at release. Having each class develop subcomponents required by other crafting classes was really confusing and would deadlock high level leveling.

The questing really put the Quest into EverQuest 2 tho. So many quests. Was really awesome.

EQ2 is still probably my favorite game of all time. EQ my most memorable.

[uygi]

I played EQ2 for maybe a couple weeks, I hated it. I felt like I needed to hit every one of those AA opportunities, which wasn’t better. I liked that they had rooted it in EQ, I felt the way they tied them together was fine. But the game just wasn’t better.

I gave a bunch of other games a shot over the years. Played Shadowbane, WoW, Vanguard but didn’t stick with any of those for more than 1-3 months. I’m pretty sure I have more /played on Blue than I did on Live.

[Ranzal]

I would disagree that Sentinel's Fate was good... EQ2 started seriously dying after Kingdoms of Sky and that weird Asian themed Fallen Dynasty adventure pack. I played in a worldwide competing guild from release to around that time and saw a lot of weird changes along the way. But anything after that pretty much homogenized all classes and armor sets to cater towards a shrinking population. I can think of numerous top guilds that literally just stopped playing around this time.

Prior to that, the servers were full, raid targets were contested, fun, and challenging (Mutegenic Outcast dps race and Tarinax's swim strategy come to mind). The mix of contested and instanced dungeons was spot on imho. Long quest chains were fun (Prismatics / Qeynos Cutlass / etc.) and remained useful through expansions. In general, I believe the game was a brilliant meld of the EQ "neckbeard" and the WoW "casual" stereotypes. Basically, what a lot of us wanted was a game that extended on the lore of EQ while adding the QoL improvements that it lacked... I feel EQ2 delivered.

Some other fun things I think EQ2 got right:
- Any Class / Any Race (original style with betrayal quests)
- Tradeskilling (As someone who detests tradeskilling albeit)
- Meaningful mob con style
- Combat / Chains (some classes were completely better than their counterparts and
broke but the general feel of combat, especially soloing, was active and enjoyable)
*I will say that combat got out of hand towards the end of KoS (like 4 hotbars of spells as a dirge)
- Art style (I know this is a debatable subject but I liked the look of the game)

EQ2 really holds a special place in my heart. As SirAlvarex said "EQ2 is still probably my favorite game of all time. EQ my most memorable." Sadly, as been mentioned Smokejumper was a complete mess and pushed F2P / Cash Shop bullshit on the server and completely neglected his loyal player base to hopefully bring in new players (it didnt). I hop on the game from time to time just to visit the old toons but the game is a heaping mess... it's unrecognizable.

[Palemoon]

Vangaurd was the far better game, gameplay wise.

EQ2 was just non stop piano playing (cats , not mozart) across the keyboard while you watched TV.

[fastboy21]

Agreed. Sentinels Fate was such a fun time to play EQ2 too. Then they changed it so each class only cared about a single stat. Meant there was now no differentiation between items on the same "tier". The inclusion of non-stat enhancements (haste, potency, etc) was the new meta but was 10x more confusion to a new player than the old stats-based itemization.



Really happy to see someone else say this. As someone who's been a fan of SOE and their games since the 90s, Smedley gets a lot of shit he doesn't deserve. He always wanted to make the best games possible.

I had no idea Smokejumper was Georgeson. Now it all makes sense, as EQ2 took a deathspiral from a quality perspective when he came onboard.


---

Legacy EQ2 was awesome, tho. It was a good intermediate between EQ and WoW in terms of gameplay and experience. WoW XP gain was way higher than EQ 1/2, the graphics were cartoony, the playerbase was on average 10 years younger, etc.

I think EQ2 was at it's best shortly after the combat revamp. That's what introduced stances and a more even playing field for classes. Classic pet classes, for example, had pets who were better than a fully buffed tank at times. The revamp also got most of the base guidelines that EQ2 held onto for the next 13+ years.

I don't miss crafting at release. Having each class develop subcomponents required by other crafting classes was really confusing and would deadlock high level leveling.

The questing really put the Quest into EverQuest 2 tho. So many quests. Was really awesome.

EQ2 is still probably my favorite game of all time. EQ my most memorable.

Fanboi hopeful lies about Smed.

He told lies about the state of EQN to the fanbase, and when his timer ran out he let his whole team go down for his hubris before the man finally came for him and his golden parachute.

The leader of the team is supposed to own the team failures...not duck and cover to protect yourself.

Not even getting into the little child tantrum he threw over the lizard squad messing with him.

Georgeson is a liar too. Watch his little EQN presentation from the "announcement event" (the one where he was rolling around stage on his broken leg scooter). Complete and total bull shit from him and Smed.

[Vaildez]

EQ2 was honestly a better game than WoW it just released at a bad time.

[Secrets]

Fanboi hopeful lies about Smed.

He told lies about the state of EQN to the fanbase, and when his timer ran out he let his whole team go down for his hubris before the man finally came for him and his golden parachute.

The leader of the team is supposed to own the team failures...not duck and cover to protect yourself.
Not even getting into the little child tantrum he threw over the lizard squad messing with him.

Georgeson is a liar too. Watch his little EQN presentation from the "announcement event" (the one where he was rolling around stage on his broken leg scooter). Complete and total bull shit from him and Smed.

Oh boy, where do I start with this misinformation...

The leader of a team isn't a CEO, you're thinking of the franchise producer, Dave Georgeson.
Smedley was a CEO, which means he had no involvement with the game's production or design at that point, beyond what makes the most money and keeps the studio afloat. This is standard for all companies in the games biz.
Smedley's job at that point in time was to make sure business deals went on as planned, to communicate with other companies, and to communicate with shareholders/investors the status of their projects. He was lied to by Georgeson as to how far along EQNext was.
That falls on Georgeson for lying to management about how far along his team was.

They had no AI programmers; the demo you saw for EQNext? That was all developers pretending to be NPCs. Completely shady, and you bet that Dave Georgeson was responsible, not Smedley, for that fuckup.
Holly Longdale was kept in the dark for the longest time regarding EQNext, too. She was mainly responsible for EQ/EQ2 and continues to be responsible for those projects. So don't blame her for Georgeson either.

Georgeson was brought in to try and monetize the game. His only experience was with Gaia Online and the original PlanetSide in terms of MMOs he's worked on. You can guess based on his resume how that went.
Destiny of Velious is the first expansion he launched for EQ2, and everything nosedived in quality starting with EQ2 Extended - which had blatanly P2W consumables, which later became EQ2's F2P model. They had a 'use Station Cash to revive' button when you died for crying out loud.

And the lizard squad thing... they called in a bomb to divert his plane. They had someone destroy his father's tombstone in San Diego's graveyard. That wasn't and isn't just a 'harmless prank' - that's MaceQuest level of sad.
Fuck Lizard Squad, there is no excuse for that behavior, and fuck you, fastboy21, for using that against Smedley's good name as if it were something he should be ashamed of. Hope Zachary and Bradley of Lizard Squad rot in jail for the rest of their miserable existence for what they put Smedley through.

[Fammaden]

slowkid21 should probably quit while he's behind and fade away instead of tripling down.

[fastboy21]

Oh boy, where do I start with this misinformation...

The leader of a team isn't a CEO, you're thinking of the franchise producer, Dave Georgeson.
Smedley was a CEO, which means he had no involvement with the game's production or design at that point, beyond what makes the most money and keeps the studio afloat. This is standard for all companies in the games biz.
Smedley's job at that point in time was to make sure business deals went on as planned, to communicate with other companies, and to communicate with shareholders/investors the status of their projects. He was lied to by Georgeson as to how far along EQNext was.
That falls on Georgeson for lying to management about how far along his team was.

They had no AI programmers; the demo you saw for EQNext? That was all developers pretending to be NPCs. Completely shady, and you bet that Dave Georgeson was responsible, not Smedley, for that fuckup.
Holly Longdale was kept in the dark for the longest time regarding EQNext, too. She was mainly responsible for EQ/EQ2 and continues to be responsible for those projects. So don't blame her for Georgeson either.

Georgeson was brought in to try and monetize the game. His only experience was with Gaia Online and the original PlanetSide in terms of MMOs he's worked on. You can guess based on his resume how that went.
Destiny of Velious is the first expansion he launched for EQ2, and everything nosedived in quality starting with EQ2 Extended - which had blatanly P2W consumables, which later became EQ2's F2P model. They had a 'use Station Cash to revive' button when you died for crying out loud.

And the lizard squad thing... they called in a bomb to divert his plane. They had someone destroy his father's tombstone in San Diego's graveyard. That wasn't and isn't just a 'harmless prank' - that's MaceQuest level of sad.
Fuck Lizard Squad, there is no excuse for that behavior, and fuck you, fastboy21, for using that against Smedley's good name as if it were something he should be ashamed of. Hope Zachary and Bradley of Lizard Squad rot in jail for the rest of their miserable existence for what they put Smedley through.

Yah, you think the CEO of a company isn't the leader and I'm the delusional one.

EVERYTHING stops at the CEO. If Georgeson was the problem (and he certainly was, we agree on that) it was the CEO's job to control him. Still on the CEO.

[fastboy21]

Fuck Lizard Squad, there is no excuse for that behavior, and fuck you, fastboy21, for using that against Smedley's good name as if it were something he should be ashamed of. Hope Zachary and Bradley of Lizard Squad rot in jail for the rest of their miserable existence for what they put Smedley through.

This is not what happened (at least not in the critically correct order of the events). Smed went off the hook in a way that cost the company money. It shouldn't have happened.

BTW, I'm not defending the LS people and I never said what they did was harmless. What they did was harmful and illegal...and Smed should have handled it the right way, instead he wrote a nice chapter for his memoirs on how to lose your cool and make mistakes when you are at the helm.

[fastboy21]

slowkid21 should probably quit while he's behind and fade away instead of tripling down.

Yep. Slow here. Smed is god. CEO is not the leader of the firm. All fault belongs to subordinates that pulled the wool over his eyes. If only Smed had really been in charge things would have been different...

Anyone seen the kool aid?

[fastboy21]

"Players will get their hands on an actual release version of what we're doing late [this] year -- and I don't mean a beta," ~John Smedley discussing EQN in January 2013.

Yep...no lying here. Straight shooter.