Just wondering if anyone else has noticed what i have about EQ2. The game is quite pretty, and there are quite a few great gameplay design improvements. Encounters, vice just pulling random stuff, the commerce system is well designed, the story is actualy somewhat interesting, and the character sbuclass/class advancement design is good. No such thing as an underconn anymore, you always know exactly what you need to have a shot at the mob. Mobs no longer follow all the way to the zone line, they give up after a while, and not realy any trains... at least nothing Karanors ( sp? been a while ) style.
All good improvements, seemingly removeing most of the greatest problems of EQ1. But also, these changes seem to facilitate another function, they take the skill out of the game, and they take the challenge out of it. 4 grps max for a raid? the new buffing system? As well it seems like many of the staples of EQ1 , Haste, Crack, Mez, snares, pbae's, FD pulls ( totaly not needed now ) Rez, taunt, lich, and all buffs have either been reduced in effectiveness to the point of mild usefulness at best, or spread across the board of classes such that they are no longer special at all. For instance, the painfully short durration and single target nature of Breeze makes it almost totaly not worth casting at all, and a grp version does not appear until level 48.
In EQ1, no matter what class you had in your group, they all had the tools to be stars, it was the player behind them that mattered, ive seen necro's play cleric, chanter, mage, and damage dealer in a group with 4 warriors and a monk, and do very well. Ive seen an entire group wipe but the chanter and the cleric, and the entire group rez, rebuff, and start killing again while the chanter keeps 5 or 6 mobs mezzed. Ive seen a wizard drag around 12 mobs in 3 separate quads at the same time, and kill every single one of them, ive seen bards kill an entire zone of mobs at once, and ive seen a necro solo mobs 10 levels higher than them. ive seen a group on its last leg when all of a sudden 2 more mobs respawn, the cleric gets off one last CH before 00m, and the tank AE taunts, pops defensive and waits it out, and miraculously they make it thru.
Ive seen 6 people clear out NToV, and watched half the loot rot, and ive seen 60 people wipe on Aary, ive seen 16 people take out TT with ease, and ive seen full raids get smoked. Ive watched 30 people spend an entire weekend in VT. And ive seens the zone with 2 full raids in it on one mob.
Im sure most everyone has seen similar, or the same things i just mentioned, many times. But that was the beautiful thing about EQ, the large scale of it, and the versatility, and the skill. The difference between a highly skilled player, and a person who was only so so at their class was invaluble. One ***** up could get you all killed, and one player rising to the occasion could save the entire group.
My problem with EQ2 is that none of the things i mentioned can happen in EQ2, the scale has been reduces to a staggeringly low level. in EQ2, Cazel wouldn't be some 51 SG wandering around butchering inattentive newbies, He would be a relatively stationary level 51 with 4 up arrows, a group 2x tag below his name, and a con measage that warns, this creature is far more difficult than he appears. He would be nearly impossible to single group, because once you were high enough to just grab a couple buddies and smoke him, hed be grey, non agro, and would drop absolutely nothing. No longer are there races to mobs, they are almost always up, you just have a timer saying you cant kill it more than every 14 days, or 7 days, or whatever. On a server reset.... you dont care, your timer is still intact, no point in having lookouts for mobs your guild needs, and people waiting for the raids to start... in fact, why even have a guild bigger than 30 people? only 24 can raid, and the mob is always up, and he drops loot every time. It just feels like an overdressed Monolpoly Jr. version of EQ with some nifty new additives. I hope they change some things as the game progresses, i want to raid, real raids, i want the excitement that EQ had... and this game just seems devoid of that thus far.