Soriak
Toomuchtimeonhands
Joined: 11 Oct 2002
Posts: 952
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 Posted: 11/05/04 - 23:46 Post subject: Misc EQ II stuff from the FoH board - super HQ screenshots
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Quite a lot of screenshots posted by Requiem on the FoH board
And some screenshots of Everfrost
I'd copy them here, but there are a LOT of them. They're all taken in 3200x1200 resolution (dual monitor) at max settings. No one can play for real with those kind of settings yet, but as we fanboys know, that's the way EQ II is designed.
note that they're .jpgs - it'll look even more detailed in game.
Requiem also posted a small video about Everfrost, showing the day/night cycle.
That covers the leetness of EQ II's graphics, but how about the end game?
Requiem:
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For those of you wondering, the high-end content in general is very difficult. Just getting anything done at all in The Feerott, for example, takes a pretty experienced group, nevermind the 2 access-quest raid/encounter zones in it, or Cazic Thule. The Feerott in itself is reminiscent of the plane of fear in difficulty and feel for a group of the appropriate level to access it. When we were first let into The Feerott, I took a group and we completed the access quest for one of the 2 raid zones. After about 10 hours and countless deaths, we completed it and zoned in. First of all, the zone requires no less than 6, and no more than 12 keyed players just to zone in. We zoned in with 6 level 40 players. When we got inside, the easiest group that could be pulled was 3 Groupx2++ blue con mobs, which alone, we probably couldn't have taken on. We pulled, 6 more spawned on a member of the group that was with the rest of us before the pull was even in, we ran and zoned, and when we tried to zone back in it said we had to wait 8 hours for failing. That sound hard to you? That's one of the first ones that could be considered high-end.
EQ2, in my opinion, has taken everything that made EQ great, and wrapped it up into a much IMPROVED game. Death penalty is balanced almost perfectly in my opinion, between the debt, the repair costs on items, and the necessity to get your corpse. Not as a f*****g ghost, as a player, who can be killed, and doesn't run at double speed. You can choose not to get your corpse, you'll still have your gear, but you don't get back about 1/5th of a level of EXP debt, and you are slightly debuffed for 72 hours /played. The debuffs stack if you have more than 1 unrecovered body. When you die, every item on your body loses 10% of it's "Condition." If any of it reaches 0%, it breaks, and you cannot wear it until you repair it. Repairing it recovers it to it's full Condition, there is no penalty or permanent degredation. Item Condition only goes down when you die. It's extremely cheap to repair your items until you get higher, when it can start becoming very very costly. If I was in charge, you would get more exp debt per death, but there are still plenty of less skilled players that live their EQ2 existances in permanent debt, so I guess it's somewhat balanced. It's still enough of a pain in the ass to die that you certainly will never catch yourself nonchalantly eating a death once you get a bit higher in level. You'll be running for your f*****g life. When you explore new areas, you will need your friends there, and you will need to proceed with extreme caution.
The thing that I like most about EQ2 is that there is no defined path you must take, much like EQ before Planes of Power. Ultimately, your path is limited by the content which is available to your level, but in EQ2 you have the same sense of freedom that EQ provided in that respect. Those who are intelligent, skilled, and adventurous will be rewarded much more greatly than those who are not. I was going to type "than those who stay on the path," but I backspaced it, because there really isn't any sort of "path" to follow.
The level grind is just long enough to be gratifying for me, and nowhere remotely near too long for me. I'd compare it with EQ1, except that you tend to have several goals, of any number of types, within a single level. Some of your spells may come at a certain number of bubbles, mobs drop little quests to kill x number of mob, there's tons of NPCs to get tons of quests from, mostly kill quests, in all of the zones if you want to. Killing more difficult mobs than you need to will yield upgrades to your spells and skills. Each type(model, basically) of mob in the game has several components which you can acquire from it to complete a special attack against that type of mob. There's so many things to compell you during your leveling that I couldn't list them all here without typing for 3 or 4 pages, and I don't feel like doing that. |
So much for EQLite :p
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