Returning to EQII

[MarrEQII]

Just wanted to say, nice job with how polished EQII has become.  I was in the beta, and played a short time after launch.  I left and went to WoW because several of my friends could not run EQII on their system, and I made the choice to go where my friends had went. As much as I would like to rant about all the bad things related to WoW, I wanted to focus on all the really neat things I have seen in EQII.  The art in EQII is great, I can't tell you how much I love the graphics.  The only issue I had with graphics at all was the glow with bloom effects, but I found a thread explaining how to turn bloom off and turn AA on.  Once I had AA on, the visual of the graphics seemed almost perfect.  I have the same system I used in Beta, only with an updated video card (nothing special only a 7800) and I could not believe how smooth the overall play is.  I have noticed a little lag when I am in a city around a large group of people, but nothing that I can complain about considering the shadowing I have on in my graphics.  I do think that a simple check box maybe ti turn on/off the AA would be a nice feature, I'm not sure that everyone would take the time to figure out how to do it (not even really sure how I found that thread now that I think on it). The character motion is amazing, I am playing a Fae - Dirge as my new return character.  The moves are so real and just play neat to watch, and with the spell effects it seems to really pull you into the combat with interest. The starting area for th Fae race is really great.  I think that adding all the teaching methods are a good idea, like the NPC's you can talk with to learn more about a specific function (how to use the bank for example).  The fact that you have a choice to talk to them or not is really great.  I think that if anyone entering the world of Norrath in a starting area for the first time could not understand what the basic game functions are after about 30 minutes of play, they really could not be making an effort of some type to learn them.  The only part in the Fae starting area that I had trouble with was the crafting.  I looked for a good amount of time on where to start the crafting, but did not notice the item in my bag with all the exact information I needed to start the crafting.  I think part of the reason was that I may have seen it when I first started, but was drawn in right away to my first quest and just simply forgot that I had the item in my bag. Shame on me for not keeping a mental note that I had the item in my bag all along. The quest log is just plain awesome.  I love the look of all of the interface.  The fact that you can make so many UI changes to fit your needs is really great.  For the first time in a long time I did not feel like I needed to load some UI mod to get things as I wanted them, rather I just spent a little time adjusting the look of the default UI to fit my needs. One feature that I really like it the ability to put a hold on getting experience.  I love this, I tend to have a play style that I want to see all the things in an area along with doing all the quests.  Sometimes you get the feeling that you are being pushed along in games because you out level the area, and maybe you just are not ready to leave that area.  The good is that you can extend the amount of time to be at a level in an area, the bad is that you really do not know if this will hurt you latter in other areas because you are I assume behind in the leveling curve.  Just having the option of holding your experience gain seems like a good idea to me. The quest I have seen in the Fae area seem really great.  The item rewards are nice, and the amount of experience per quest seems really good.  All of the mini story lines that each quest has, seems to really draw my attention.  I am finding that I am even reading all the tings I have to read because I really enjoy the material given.  I am very excited to have a large collection of books in my house.  I am kind of hoping that at some point there will be some type of quest line that takes me back to a book I have already read and have sitting on my book shelf in my house. Collection quests like finding a spotted bug of some kind is great.  So many of us love to collect just for the simple fun in trying to get that missing item in your collection. the in game browser, neat idea.  I can not say if its new in the game world, but this was the first time I had seen it.  It was not very clear on how to open it, and I may have missed the simple steps telling me or even a button icon going right to it.  I am niot sure I would have known it was there, but heard about it in a podcast at some point, so I started typing random / commands hoping to open it, and well I got lucky with /browser to work. Well, I could go on for hours adding to all the things here I really like in the world of Norrath.  But, I am no writer by any means and I am sure my lack of good grammar skills would  simply drive many of you crazy.  I just wanted to say that all in all EQII really is a very well polished MMO game.  SOE has done a great job in putting their HEART into the game, and from what I can tell their community.  The SOE podcast for example is really great, and I hope to see more things like that in the future. One thing I do want to say as a return customer is the items from the box sets is a little upsetting.  When I bought EQII are launch I bought the COE version for all the great items it came with.  I still have the character with the limited edition dragon pet, but I do not want to jump back in to EQII playing him.  I would even delete him if it was not for the fact that he has my pet dragon and other items on him.  It would be nice to have a /claim option to let me really caome back and start EQII fresh and be able to get the items on my character from the COE.  Also, I may just be missing something here.  I bought all of the expansions upon my return to EQII, and did not see any reason to go shopping at a store for them so I used the digital download.  I feel very cheated that I can not have the in game bonus items with my digital version that a person who buys the box can get.  Maybe I am off base here, and maybe I can get them but do not know how.  If I can get them, it is very unclear to me on how I do that. Well, again grat job SOE with a very polished game.  I would love to see some of the mature players in WoW that are sick of the bad WoW community to come and give EQII a try.  It really much better I think then what most think. - Oakshay

[chubbybunny]

i'm also in the process of returning (looooong patch download.. <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> ) to eq2 after wow - after having exhausted the solo content i was interested in experiencing, and never having had any interest in doing any pvp, the last straw was as you said, the community - on the whole eq2 seems to attract a much more mature and friendly client-base - it will be nice to be back in a welcoming environment and also in the most dangerous game on the market for fuelling my alt-craze <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />. just one character this time..  sure, who am i kidding...

[jrm99002]

<p>Welcome back <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[RayOfHope]

<p>I have to agree with a lot of what you said (although I didn't purchase the expansion yet so I know nothing about the new models and zones).</p><p>As a new beginner, I find the quest log and helpful NPC placement incredibly helpful. And coming from WoW (and if you've played it, you know what I mean), I've yet to see any ridiculously mis-spelled beginner questions, because honestly, all you have to do is read, and follow the instructions exactly. So detailed, it's great. Props to the Devs for making a potentially overwhelming game so beginner friendly right off the bat. </p><p>I'm still tring to figure out how to tweak my settings to make things less choppy. Like, the robe on my conjurer seems to be clipping a lot, and it's really starting to bother me. I'm running 1g RAM on a 2.2 Athlon with a Nvidia 5700 Video card. I can probably up my RAM to 1.5g or 2 if that'll help.</p><p>Any advice on how I can play with my settings to make things a bit smoother?</p>

[Forsaken1]

<cite>RayOfHope wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>I have to agree with a lot of what you said (although I didn't purchase the expansion yet so I know nothing about the new models and zones).</p><p>As a new beginner, I find the quest log and helpful NPC placement incredibly helpful. And coming from WoW (and if you've played it, you know what I mean), I've yet to see any ridiculously mis-spelled beginner questions, because honestly, all you have to do is read, and follow the instructions exactly. So detailed, it's great. Props to the Devs for making a potentially overwhelming game so beginner friendly right off the bat. </p><p>I'm still tring to figure out how to tweak my settings to make things less choppy. Like, the robe on my conjurer seems to be clipping a lot, and it's really starting to bother me. I'm running 1g RAM on a 2.2 Athlon with a Nvidia 5700 Video card. I can probably up my RAM to 1.5g or 2 if that'll help.</p><p>Any advice on how I can play with my settings to make things a bit smoother?</p></blockquote>Adding another 512 meg of memory will help overall performance. I would also suggest changing video cards. I've seen the 6600gt cards for $50.00 . While not being a power-house of a card, it will still improve gameplay.

[xOnaton1]

<cite>MarrEQII wrote:</cite><blockquote>One thing I do want to say as a return customer is the items from the box sets is a little upsetting.  When I bought EQII are launch I bought the COE version for all the great items it came with.  I still have the character with the limited edition dragon pet, but I do not want to jump back in to EQII playing him.  I would even delete him if it was not for the fact that he has my pet dragon and other items on him.  It would be nice to have a /claim option to let me really caome back and start EQII fresh and be able to get the items on my character from the COE.  Also, I may just be missing something here.  I bought all of the expansions upon my return to EQII, and did not see any reason to go shopping at a store for them so I used the digital download.  I feel very cheated that I can not have the in game bonus items with my digital version that a person who buys the box can get.  Maybe I am off base here, and maybe I can get them but do not know how.  If I can get them, it is very unclear to me on how I do that. Well, again grat job SOE with a very polished game.  I would love to see some of the mature players in WoW that are sick of the bad WoW community to come and give EQII a try.  It really much better I think then what most think. - Oakshay </blockquote>The collector's edition of EQ2 in the metal box gives you three house items, an EQ2 painting, a statue of Lucan or Antonia, and a pet dragon. These are only claimable one time so make sure to claim them on a character that you will keep. The eq2 painting is not tradable but the statue and pet dragon are, because you actually claim a wrapped statue (which is no trade) which turns into Lucan or Antonia depending on which city you live in and you claim a dragon egg (which is no trade) which hatches into a dragon color of your choice. So, the only item stuck on your character is the EQ2 painting. The best deal for getting the full game is the retail box of Echoes of Faydwer. The retail box of EoF has the original game and all three expansions and the bonus items from previous expansions. You can even purchase it and get the serial number online from a store like onlinecdkey.com if stores in your area don't carry it. Digital downloads from SOE do not normally include the bonuses that the retail boxes have. Unfortunately you have to read carefully what is included with each version. The retail versions have special items because the retail stores need some incentive to carry the game in the first place. If the digital download and retail versions were exactly the same, more people would just get the download version and retail stores wouldn't want to carry the game. Having the game on retail shelves is good exposure and advertisement for the game. I assume this is a marketing decision and not one made by the EQ2 dev team. Compare EQ2 expansions to EQ Live expansions. The last two  EQ Live expansions were only available through digital download and not sold in stores, but they are planning on releasing an <a href="http://eqplayers.station.sony.com/news_article.vm?id=50379" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">"Anniversary Edition"</a> soon that will include all of their expansions. Othesus - Dirge - Lucan DLere Vaspar - Fury - Lucan DLere

[RayOfHope]

<cite>Forsaken1 wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>RayOfHope wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>I have to agree with a lot of what you said (although I didn't purchase the expansion yet so I know nothing about the new models and zones).</p><p>As a new beginner, I find the quest log and helpful NPC placement incredibly helpful. And coming from WoW (and if you've played it, you know what I mean), I've yet to see any ridiculously mis-spelled beginner questions, because honestly, all you have to do is read, and follow the instructions exactly. So detailed, it's great. Props to the Devs for making a potentially overwhelming game so beginner friendly right off the bat. </p><p>I'm still tring to figure out how to tweak my settings to make things less choppy. Like, the robe on my conjurer seems to be clipping a lot, and it's really starting to bother me. I'm running 1g RAM on a 2.2 Athlon with a Nvidia 5700 Video card. I can probably up my RAM to 1.5g or 2 if that'll help.</p><p>Any advice on how I can play with my settings to make things a bit smoother?</p></blockquote>Adding another 512 meg of memory will help overall performance. I would also suggest changing video cards. I've seen the 6600gt cards for $50.00 . While not being a power-house of a card, it will still improve gameplay. </blockquote><p>I broke down and got a new 512 meg video card (being that my other one was 3 years old anyway), and wow, what a difference. The graphics are so much more beautiful and intricate, and the choppiness is gone. Very happy with it! Should last very nicely until the next major PC upgrade anyway.  <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> </p>