so i have been exploring

[magnetaress]

eq2 neriak...

every building is the same its all reskinned

the only cute place is queen 'christ'anos palace which has mansevants and faeries

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there is no maidens fancy anywhere that i can obviously tell

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the cool waterfall with the eye is an afterthought

i mean it has some charm but its like 1% the charm of EQ 1 and I can see how modern 'design' and 'production' have really hurt the lore aspect of it

the only secret i could find seemed kind of intentional and it was for chocolate chip cookies above the rogues guild

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apparently all the vampires in the FQ of the FQ are trans people competing for biggest thigh gap. seems like the designers were more interested in those guys than the dork elves

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I could find some more compelling dark elf, tier'dal, evil lore on second life, in fact i once visited 3 towns there that kinda blew anything online/mmo/'game' out of the water but those were peoples crusty old rp villages were they wierded out with other lonely 40 yr old males

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oh and there are absolutely precious tidbits of preciously cute dialog sprinkled about, and a theatre for the bards that dark elves can be now, that was ok, the theatre play almost ... almost... needed some more depth and a better 'flow', but the building and the 'projection' on the back wall was a cool concept and worked...it explained all the faeries

----------- anyway --------------

its clear the raw fresh art talent went to vanguard and then got scarfed up by wow and made to capitulate to 'real production rules in order to ship on time'. Vanguard had some tasty artistry. For a late in the game MMO churned out. It didn't follow the rules. Much like EQ1 was an adventure in making a new kind of game and it didn't have any rules to follow. Redundant mazes in the city where totally OK to spend hours and hours on making.

For any MMO to be succesfull u have to let the level designers and artists have absolutely free reign to just go apeshit, and not allow them to copy, rotate, and repaste the same stuff, and drop a different skin on it. Look to the quake community for level designers, they make visually compelling and interesting flow maps through multiple vectors.

[magnetaress]

I would like to add that liek.. 5 buttons.. or so is about right for an MMO, the rest of the game play should be invovled in working with the quirks of the engine, and world, and rules in general, the skill shouldn't be in pressing the buttons at all. Those are just flavor and avanues of working with the worlds wonderful features, bugs, features, u know...

[Mblake81]

there is no maidens fancy anywhere that i can obviously tell

No inkie strip club? Hard pass, not that I would play it in the first place.


the cool waterfall with the eye is an afterthought

i mean it has some charm but its like 1% the charm of EQ 1 and I can see how modern 'design' and 'production' have really hurt the lore aspect of it

It's possible that EQ2 derived its inspiration from EQ, whereas EQ has Forgotten Realms as one of the sources. Could be more direct than #2.

its clear the raw fresh art talent went to vanguard and then got scarfed up by wow and made to capitulate to 'real production rules in order to ship on time'. Vanguard had some tasty artistry. For a late in the game MMO churned out. It didn't follow the rules. Much like EQ1 was an adventure in making a new kind of game and it didn't have any rules to follow. Redundant mazes in the city where totally OK to spend hours and hours on making.

Hard pass on Vanguard.

For any MMO to be succesfull u have to let the level designers and artists have absolutely free reign to just go apeshit, and not allow them to copy, rotate, and repaste the same stuff, and drop a different skin on it. Look to the quake community for level designers, they make visually compelling and interesting flow maps through multiple vectors.

Inclined to agree with old quake/doom/build engine designers, same with original EQ in some places. Really good designs, even original Tomb Raider was cool (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nbJ7FveDnw). I associate it with the engines that were used, new engines just don't have that or are not used that way.

Although I would have to remark that avoiding copy pasta is why old world giants look one way and the kunark/velious giants all look different. Lack of cohesion, in the old world you have hill/ice/fire/sand giants sharing a similar model. Velious is off-putting, moreso than Kunark.

[magnetaress]

No inkie strip club? Hard pass, not that I would play it in the first place.




It's possible that EQ2 derived its inspiration from EQ, whereas EQ has Forgotten Realms as one of the sources. Could be more direct than #2.



Hard pass on Vanguard.



Inclined to agree with old quake/doom/build engine designers, same with original EQ in some places. Really good designs, even original Tomb Raider was cool (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nbJ7FveDnw). I associate it with the engines that were used, new engines just don't have that or are not used that way.

Although I would have to remark that avoiding copy pasta is why old world giants look one way and the kunark/velious giants all look different. Lack of cohesion, in the old world you have hill/ice/fire/sand giants sharing a similar model. Velious is off-putting, moreso than Kunark.

I actually like the progression of the games graphics in the old content, because I feel like I am moving from one world to the next, one continent to the next. I love that hill giants and frontiers mountains giants are a little bit different. (OK a lot of bit different, I agree too different, but the effect is still a good one if we ignore that they are super round wierd)

I totally agree the artwork could have used the same engine and graphics design concepts as the original HG, but used a slightly different skin to give a more cohesive and coherent scheme, but ironically the evolution of the game is what made each expansion distinct.

Sometimes it's hard to tell what copy of what zone I am in when I try out wow. Because the only thing different now is my character model went from a night elf to a void elf.

Otherwise I agree. Forgotten realms was the best, especially back when it was just being computerized for the 1st time ever.

Digitization of real stuff makes it lose depth and reallness for sure. Virtualize my coffee why don't u... (sarcasm)

thanks for replying i am going insane and i liked the attention )

I believe the iksar models before luclin, got it just right, they were a little bit more complex and well designed than the old models but definately not too different, and looked so cool, probably better than my elf maiden, *sheepish grin*

[magnetaress]

I am giong to doubler post cuz i dont want to keep spamming edits:

Kunark was the best graphical timeline, if we had updated all of the graphics in the old world to kunark style and given all later expansions a limit on kunark era graphics,

we would have made some amazing fucking areas

we as in humanity, i wish i was a graphics designer



*********** FINAL FUCKING EDIT**********

the old world models just needed a few more faces, and animations, and the girls needed a little moderation and some slight improvements to posture, not in a more sexually deviant way than the assless chaps were already, the world would have been perfect (its remotely possible i could have ended up slightly less gay)

**************

LOOOKIN FOR TIME TRAVEL MACHINE

[Mblake81]

I actually like the progression of the games graphics in the old content, because I feel like I am moving from one world to the next, one continent to the next. I love that hill giants and frontiers mountains giants are a little bit different.

it's one world, just moving to different continents. Kunark and velious might've been planned to be in the original release. At least one magazine article mentions kunark and velious before the originals release.

I totally agree the artwork could have used the same engine and graphics design concepts as the original HG, but used a slightly different skin to give a more cohesive and coherent scheme, but ironically the evolution of the game is what made each expansion distinct.

And people bitched about any models that were copy pasted, I remember. Yeah, I would be fine with the Kael giants being the old world models with armor on. They had a charm to them.

Sometimes it's hard to tell what copy of what zone I am in when I try out wow. Because the only thing different now is my character model went from a night elf to a void elf.

Dunno. Every zone in EQ was fairly unique and you could navigate by landmarks. Maybe the ocean zones (cool concept) were similar but the islands in each were different.

[magnetaress]

it's one world, just moving to different continents. Kunark and velious might've been planned to be in the original release. At least one magazine article mentions kunark and velious before the originals release.



And people bitched about any models that were copy pasted, I remember. Yeah, I would be fine with the Kael giants being the old world models with armor on. They had a charm to them.



Dunno. Every zone in EQ was fairly unique and you could navigate by landmarks. Maybe the ocean zones (cool concept) were similar but the islands in each were different.

landmarks exactly, every room in sola looks different enough that i can almost tell which ones i am in, definately the important ones like the barkeep, the throne room etc

same with guk though guk has a few confusing areas, but they seem to be purposefully confusing, same with ct maze, but once u get deeper in its obvious were u are and ur not somewhere else in the zone

the loot tube that is I cant even remember the god damn named of the zone because its so undistinct... "The Motherload" which is actually one of wows best loot tubes it's the one i remember the best and does have some cuteness but it's fucking impossible to tell were u are @ in it u just zoom thru as fast as humanly possible go either left or right then straight up the middle again and the end looks a little bit more like a theatre stage and it gets a little more thematically post apocolyptic rather than skid row - just blurrrrs toghether
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eq is also full of old half finished uncared for secrets and stuff too

the invisible wall in the gnome caster guild

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the tunnels that allowed my ranger to sneak into neriak

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all the invisible walls and stuff like the shortcut to the goblin foremen thru the predators sorta spawn room thru that invis wall

----- the cities having sewers and undercities which were seperate from the main city and not integrated ----

WoW and EQ2 cities feel more like grobb and oggok, though even grobb and oggok have a lot of charm i'm not dissing on grob it has a lot of character but it's simplified compared to freeport

------ new freeport is horrific -------- it could have been good if they didn't rush it out and half ass it like they did but it is a shambles compared to the old one

------- that river in kaladim that goes from two parts of the town ------ and is an non-obvious alternate route

once i level up on live again i will report back in from the stone hive bixies i think some of the later expansions flirted with different design concepts that weere interesting enough on their own 1 off merits

[Mblake81]

Yeah, I agree.

[magnetaress]

Yeah, I agree.

thanks :)

[Bigsham]

Check out mistmoore catacombs in fay expansion, its a massive zone and if you go deep enough it turns into epic x2 and x4 vampire mobs, very cool

a low level dungeon with dark elf neriak theme is fallen gate

Everquest 2 is so much cooler then people think, the heritage quests were amazing for all the legacy items.