Classic EQ2 vs revamped EQ2

[1000Words]

interstellarmatter wrote:

1000Words wrote:

I remember..-Reviving didn't give you an option of accepting it

The Cleric's Odyssey didn't used to get you the option to accept..just zapped you back to town.  In the spell description, back when SOE had spell descriptions on the website, said, Use Odyssey to zap that group member who happens to fall asleep deep in a dungeon back to the safety of town.

It was funny to use against node stealers.  They'd take off running when they saw me start to cast Odyssey.

oh.. yea... I was talking about clerics reviving people.. I guess I left that out. about Odyssey though, that's really funny also..I just remembered about The Plague that inflicted Norrath!! that was fun..everyone was puking all the timeedit-.. @ Leatherneck.. and then when SoE did allow you to set foot in the opposing faction without betraying, when the guards caught you instead of attacking you they just threw you back into either CL or Ant.. hehe

[Bloodba]

I still remember going to Permafrost and falling off the map.  Had to start back at the enterance to Everfrost and you had a shard that was unretrivable unless you sent in a petition.  That was a big pain.

[tass]

standing on flippys hill with my (summoner) with my beetle trying to work out a stratagy to kill all the gnolls while my actually tanking bug fought on like a guardian.  The choice every summoner took at 20 was the huge black rock pet. The tellurian hero I believe it was.New people shouting out in ooc asking what to do on the trial of the isle. Grp shout outs for the caves, or the pirate.Group shout outs to specific named classes for things like bb or firemyst.Killing and killing and killing to finally have the accomplishment that you earned 1 gold. And you could buy yourself an adept 3 with 3 more lol.

[Miyana95]

Kalem wrote:

The original EQ2...what it was when the game was rolled out was indeed a bit different.

The game was a lot more group dependent.  You would see more heroic mobs than you would solo mobs.

The xp gained from solo encounters was super low.

The xp gained from quests was super low.

You could not start out as your desired class.  Say that you wanted to be a monk.  You would have to start out as a figther form level 1-9.  Just like the guardian, berserker, etc.  Then from 10-19, you would be a brawler.  Finally at 20 you would become a monk.  This was a pain, since each class was very generic durring this period.  Someone looking to become a necromancer would play 19 levels as a summoner...that felt nothing like a necromancer.

Content was locked by quests or levels.  For instance, in order to get to the Enchanted lands, you had to do a series of tough quests.  You were eligible for the quest at level 25 (IIR).  These were group quests, with the final quest being a really cool fight on a ship.  As fun as these were, they were also very frustrating, since failure meant having to do the ship run over and over again.   If you wanted to bypass the quest, you could wait till you hit level 32 I believe it was.  That would give you automatic access.  There were similar quests for each of the tier zones, like Zek, Permafrost, and Feerot.

There were no AA's then.  So there was little difference between one Shadow Knight and another.

The level cap was 50.

There were no cloaks.

The only mounts we had were horses.

There were no Alternate Appearance models (SOGA).

There was actually a death penalty.  You would gain experience debpt each time you died, and you would leave a spirit shard on the ground.  You could gain some of that experience back by returning to your spirit, and clicking on it.  The xp debt was pretty bad.  You really didn't want to die back then.  To make matters worse, experience debt was shared with the group.  So if one person perished then the whole group felt it.  It was a system that made sense, however, it would frustrate many since some players were very careless, and the whole group would pay the price for that.

It was the age of the fighters.  Berzerkers, Monks, Bruisers, and Shadow Knights, pumped out some very impressive dps.  Especially the monks, and zerkers.  I remember having an extremely hard time keeping up on the parses against bruisers and monks when I played a brigand.  It was rather frustrating, since they could solo, and scouts...all scouts had a horrible time soloing back then.  Taking on an even con was a chore...you couldn't even think about heroic encounters solo.

Things changed little by little, but the most drastic change came with live update 13.  Known as LU13.  That really changed combat.  I was quite against it at first...but eventually grew to like the change.

Edit:

Forgot to mention that once you hit level 20 you would have to complete a series of quests before picking your final class.

  I sorta miss some of those necessary quests...

Did forget one thing... you dont need to do a quest to gain trust (and therefore access) to your city anymore.

[thyriel81]

not to forget weeks of camping for the simplest heritage quests Soon after EQ2 went life i spent whole 2 weeks camping the nameds for Lightbringer ^^oh and yes, shared group debt everyone hated scouts when they sneaked around and died and everyone had 20% debt from it hehe

[Norrsken]

thyriel81 wrote:

not to forget weeks of camping for the simplest heritage quests " />Soon after EQ2 went life i spent whole 2 weeks camping the nameds for Lightbringer ^^oh and yes, shared group debt " />everyone hated scouts when they sneaked around and died and everyone had 20% debt from it hehe

Otoh, shared group debt made people happy whith scouts that knew when to evac. A skill I developed quite well and that came to use again on pvp servers. Hehe.

[novafluxx]

Reading some of this reminds me of why I bought the game in November 2004, and tried playing a scout...and cancelled my account about 1 or 2 months later. I played at odd hours and liked to solo a lot... I just came back a couple months ago and I am extremely happy with the improvements and changes

[Kaian]

All the above ... and also, I remember .... 

Trying to make the run through Nek from J'Rais to Port Naythex in the low 20s through endless aggro owlbears and firelight shrillers, at the slower run speed then and with adrenaline pounding ...

 Not being able to transfer items or money between Good and Evil characters.

The dialogue when arriving in Freeport for the first time from the Isle of Refuge and being given a room, and then the quests arising from that, returning to find the landlord doing various dodgy things and bribing you to go off and do something else.

Hardly any variation in clothing styles or colours or patterns.

 I recently came back to the game after 2 years absence, having bored people in Another Game stupid by going on and on about EQ2 until they wanted to take a look for themselves.  Personally, I love almost all the changes, but then I'm mainly a soloist, so they make the game far more playable for me.

[Vonotar]

Ulvhamne@Nagafen wrote:

I think the OP should have asked; What wont I miss from the original EQ2.Things you wont miss are;

•  Falling through the world at all kinds of wierd places
• Group shared debt.
• And ending up with 100% debt after a bad group.
• and 5-10 missing shards.
• Access quests for ever [I cannot control my vocabulary] hole in the world. 
• HORRIBLE memory leaks forcing you to restart the game after a few zonings here and there.
• 40% slower standard runspeed. Thats right, you heard me. We used to run slower at 0% runspeed. CL sure felt HUGE back then.
• ... and the list goes on!

Falling through the world still happens, especially if you are a Fae...If you climb the wall that divides qeynos harbour (down the middle) and jump in the direction of the docks the world 'disappears' and you fall through it.In south qeynos there is a spot near the archway into the mage tower area that you can jump into (as a fae) and disappear thru the world.

[Guy De Alsace]

I miss:

• Village quests.
• A lot of the dialogue.
• Antonica (recently neutered), its sad to see Grolven Chiptooth and Holly Windstalker reduced to easy mobs
• Some aspects of old style tradeskilling. Before you felt like you actually made something and it was usually pretty good. Now its pretty naff and easy mode.
• The level 10 and 20 training missions.
• Rares and Masters actually being rare.
• Mastercrafted (or legendary as it was then) being really good (coupled with rare tradeskill raws being rare)

Dont miss:

• Spirit shards
• Group debt
• Even less variety in armour/clothing (you thought it was bad now!)
• Inability to send mail to evil/good alike
• Maximum stacks of 20
• Extreme camping
• Gear gradually getting worse as you level

[dawy]

Ulion@Befallen wrote:

Also, new players will never know the joys of having a fish or octopus chase you all the way across Antonica.

LOL happy days indeed

And yes to see holly and grolvin looking forlorn nowadays does make feel rather sad for them.

[Jaradcel]

I miss:Inquisitors getting their reactives doing damage. Cmon... give ti back to me on PvE servers Running screaming through Nek to get to the docks the first time, and how tough Nek used to be. Man that place is carebear to the max these days.The lower economy. Back then, 1gp meant something. I remember I had no money and a friend in Freeport_Crafting helped me buy the lightbringer starter HQ for 50sp which was ALOT back then. Having the intermediate items to craft. I made a mint making those for lazy crafters When certain dungeons were almost deathtraps. FG + Armor quests, anyone? Heck, Edgewater drains, anyone? Being able to odessey annoying people home. I carried three stacks of that just to do that....Out-of-group feign death from SK's. Bloody fun.The [Removed for Content] bells all the way to Perma. For 1gp, but oh my god what a lifesaver back then it was to not hve to run all the way. Can we have this back? Pwease?I don't miss:Shard debtHaving to re-do the entire everling quest every time we zoned into nek castle1The forced 1-19 class changing. For the longest time I wondered why I wasn't getting an update to my Crown of pawns spell before finding out "Oh. Those templars get it..." Access quests for every zone. Although as a quester I'm glad they left it in there for those who still want to do them. Having to stay logged on in your room to broker stuff. Oh gods.... No griffons between areas heavily travelled. I cheered like hell when griffon stations went up in Nek and all.

[thyriel81]

Guy De Alsace wrote:

I miss:

• Mastercrafted (or legendary as it was then) being really good (coupled with rare tradeskill raws being rare)

Ill find it much much better as it is now. The high levels are still rare (back in old days i needed around 1 week farming or harvesting to get a 40+ spell at adept3, not to speak of having a master, barely anyone ever saw them) and the low levels make sense now, as it just was good for no one to have a lvl20 master when they costed some plat so no one would effort it for a toon to outlevels it within some days.Not to speak of low level mastercrafted armor, which was just useless at all costing 10p total for wearing it a week or 2.

[Norrsken]

Vonotar@Butcherblock wrote:

Ulvhamne@Nagafen wrote:

I think the OP should have asked; What wont I miss from the original EQ2.Things you wont miss are;

•  Falling through the world at all kinds of wierd places
• Group shared debt.
• And ending up with 100% debt after a bad group.
• and 5-10 missing shards.
• Access quests for ever [I cannot control my vocabulary] hole in the world. 
• HORRIBLE memory leaks forcing you to restart the game after a few zonings here and there.
• 40% slower standard runspeed. Thats right, you heard me. We used to run slower at 0% runspeed. CL sure felt HUGE back then.
• ... and the list goes on!

Falling through the world still happens, especially if you are a Fae...If you climb the wall that divides qeynos harbour (down the middle) and jump in the direction of the docks the world 'disappears' and you fall through it.In south qeynos there is a spot near the archway into the mage tower area that you can jump into (as a fae) and disappear thru the world.

Yeah, but nowadays, it basically happens when you go places you arent supposed to. Back then you could be traversing CL, and all of a sudden find yourself below the world in freefall. must have happened 30 times to me the first few months.

[TheMightyTaco]

Oh yes, I forgot what is probably the largest change ever:

Once upon a time when you were harvesting rares the rules were entirely different. You could only get a maximum of three tries to harvest a node. So the maximum number of items you could hope to get from one node was THREE. But you were likely to get "Nothing Found" messages. So harvesting took forever. And that was before the tools existed to speed up harvesting.

I'm not sure about harvested pelts, but ones you got from mobs were of four different qualities. I am thinking that harvested ones were too. So you'd end up with stacks and stacks of 'ruined wolf pelt', 'pristine wolf pelt', and the like. And those only stacked to twenty. So inventory space went away fast. Remember fungus nodes? Each tier dropped like 8 to 12 different types of fungus!

Along with the old tradeskilling system, it was horrible because nearly every crafted item came in four different flavors. Food, drink, spells, armor, subcomponents, and the like had four differing qualities. Those filled up bags quickly. And what was the maximum bag size back then? 18 or 24?

Speaking of inventory space, mobs drop more coin now than they used to. Back in the day, instead of dropping coin, they used to drop "icky" body parts. So you'd have to go sell the items to get the coin equivalent. You'd end up with severed hands, organs, skins, and such which sold for a few silver. Now we just get the silver directly from the mob.

And speaking of things dropping from mobs... treasure chests used to be deadly. VERY DEADLY. Woe be unto you if you didn't have a scout in your group. Opening a chest could wipe a group. Lots of debt in that situation. Plus, there were times we'd be fighting in Varsoon's and a chest would drop while still fighting. Someone would open the chest in the middle of battle and suddenly everyone was mezzed for 30 or 60 seconds. Not to mention the time when Splitpaw came out and there were double-damage chests. If they were deadly they struck for 200% damage. Ouch. And reviving sent you outside the zone so the loot was lost.

This game has come a long way. Some things will be missed, but so many more won't be missed at all.

[dhvyse000]

matt2004 wrote:

something you should know that also changed from release..

1. the time it takes to level / xp gain has been increased substantially...or maybe its just the gear...i dont know but its MUCH easier now (if you keep xp on)

2. i really really miss the difficulty that the game used to have...for example enchanters and bards. these guys used to be a major addition to a group about to run an instance and yes they still are, but back then someone there to mez an add was the difference in the group wiping....now its just a dps-fest and kill everything as fast as possible.

This is the sole reason my Coercer is basically a Solo Class now.  The difficulty is low enough where adds aren't as much of a problem, so a group usually want more DPS over the mez.  But I also think this was fixed but people fail to realize this and STILL don't want Enchanters.  My coercer puts out rediculous DPS because of my AA spec yet no one gives her a chance... it gets EXTREMELY frustrating for a class that is SO powerful in a group to hardly EVER be able to get a group.  It just seems people forget we have very long duration stuns, reactive stuns, and hardy DPS now and still the extremely powerful mez.Heres to Takarii(Guk), a pretty much retired 57 Human Coercer. (I take the groups when they come.. which is MAYBE once a month.)

[Iseabeil]

/ooc Holly is up!! everyone runs and hides..

No matter what level you were or what you had accomplished, if you had betrayed, you would get stuck on the 'just out of isle' greetin.. Gods, that bloody dwarf annoyed me more then nathan...

Invis and stealth being reliable with very few see invis mobs, atleast if you had adept3 or above...

Templars getting group cure for every 'mastery choise' and being The afk healer, whilst druids were dieing like flies cause of their regen agro and shaman's wards made the tanks take more damage then if they had no wards.

Getting to lvl 10 on my very first enchanter and recieving my very first mez, wich I unfortunatly had no idea what it was as I had no EQlive experience.. Mezzing a mob and then starting to nuke it might not have been all that usefull now that I think back

The class quests.. I dont miss the kill x mobs part, but the other stuff around it. Remember my bard directing an orchestra or something, and my chanter had to run around and collect witnesses from an event that were totally messed up to learn about manipulation, summoner 'constructing' their first pet (I think, or somethin alike), rogues gettin to do sneaky stuff etc.

Spending forever lfg as illusionist as so many had no idea about the buffs and solo was horrible... Then when you got a group, they got all extatic after a while when they saw the difference, whereas logging into a healer often meant there'd be a group invite window before you had even fully loaded, thus almost all healers were /anon.

And of course, running through super-agro and super-red nek forest at lvl 13/14 to start your new life in qeynos... Then those hypocrits got upset that ye tried to kill Lucan, so they send ye to kill 505 sentient beings to teach you its wrong to kill.. never really understood that one.

And some vocal people on forums wanting it to be harder to betray, as 'there were too many evil races in Qeynos' etc so should be so hard that almost noone would bother doing it.

[interstellarmatter]

Anyone remember how stealth use to slow you down?  I'm not talking about getting no speed buffs in stealth.  It used to be like -20% or something to your normal walk speed.  Kind of like how the Rogue is in WoW.   If you stayed stealth in a group, you'd never be able to catch up.  So, you had to time your stealth correctly before a battle.

Also, everyone's base walk speed used to be slower.

[Nelin]

Kalem wrote:

The original EQ2...what it was when the game was rolled out was indeed a bit different.

The game was a lot more group dependent.  You would see more heroic mobs than you would solo mobs.

The xp gained from solo encounters was super low.

The xp gained from quests was super low.

You could not start out as your desired class.  Say that you wanted to be a monk.  You would have to start out as a figther form level 1-9.  Just like the guardian, berserker, etc.  Then from 10-19, you would be a brawler.  Finally at 20 you would become a monk.  This was a pain, since each class was very generic durring this period.  Someone looking to become a necromancer would play 19 levels as a summoner...that felt nothing like a necromancer.

Content was locked by quests or levels.  For instance, in order to get to the Enchanted lands, you had to do a series of tough quests.  You were eligible for the quest at level 25 (IIR).  These were group quests, with the final quest being a really cool fight on a ship.  As fun as these were, they were also very frustrating, since failure meant having to do the ship run over and over again.   If you wanted to bypass the quest, you could wait till you hit level 32 I believe it was.  That would give you automatic access.  There were similar quests for each of the tier zones, like Zek, Permafrost, and Feerot.

There were no AA's then.  So there was little difference between one Shadow Knight and another.

The level cap was 50.

There were no cloaks.

The only mounts we had were horses.

There were no Alternate Appearance models (SOGA).

There was actually a death penalty.  You would gain experience debpt each time you died, and you would leave a spirit shard on the ground.  You could gain some of that experience back by returning to your spirit, and clicking on it.  The xp debt was pretty bad.  You really didn't want to die back then.  To make matters worse, experience debt was shared with the group.  So if one person perished then the whole group felt it.  It was a system that made sense, however, it would frustrate many since some players were very careless, and the whole group would pay the price for that.

It was the age of the fighters.  Berzerkers, Monks, Bruisers, and Shadow Knights, pumped out some very impressive dps.  Especially the monks, and zerkers.  I remember having an extremely hard time keeping up on the parses against bruisers and monks when I played a brigand.  It was rather frustrating, since they could solo, and scouts...all scouts had a horrible time soloing back then.  Taking on an even con was a chore...you couldn't even think about heroic encounters solo.

Things changed little by little, but the most drastic change came with live update 13.  Known as LU13.  That really changed combat.  I was quite against it at first...but eventually grew to like the change.

Edit:

Forgot to mention that once you hit level 20 you would have to complete a series of quests before picking your final class.

The only mounts we had were horses.  This is not true.  Guild level 30 carpets.

[Kalem]

Nelinia, if I memory serves...and sometimes it doesn't, since I am getting old, the carpets came later.  The original guild level 30 mounts were one of the horse types.

EDIT: I stand corrected.  I found this old post, which goes over the old guild rewards.  http://www.cspacezone.com/forums/in...showtopic=18925

As I read it, I bumped into another old nugget.  Guild Patrons.  It used to be that a guild would flag certain members as the patrons.  Those patrons would be the ones that would contribute to the guild status.  I'm glad they did away with that!

[Geothe]

dont forget armor and CA/Spell scaling. hehe.

 Where damage would change on your CAs and spells as you leveled until they reached "full effectiveness" only to be replaced again.

 And Armor would scale as well, where you could equip the item at lvl X but wouldnt get full benefit from it until lvl Y.

hehe

[Nelin]

and mitigation on jewelry to.

[Lugerron]

I think what I miss the most are the class quests -- that little halfling that told me what I had to do to become a Ranger really annoyed me though.  However, I still like the fact that I wasn't an Assasin before I became a Ranger.  I also remember during the betrayal quest having to spend countless hours looking for the 5 named that you had to kill.  I did them all while on vacation in Sweden... Good times!

I also remember having to wait several days to get my Limited Edition box of EQ2.  I ended up having to go to my local EBGames to get a normal version in order to start playing before I *finally* got my LE version. 

Of course, the stealthing was cool, you just had to make sure that it was kept up to date.  One of the sad things that happened to me was that on the day before they were going to kill stealth, I had a Master I drop for me.  I still miss that CA.

I also remember when finding a good tank was a struggle.  One day we were in a pick-up group, and the tank had to go afk for some reason.  So he left himself in auto-attack so that we could still continue.  Him auto-attacking was actually better than some of the tanks that we had found previously!  So we dubbed him the Auto-Tank 2000.   We had a good laugh out of that one.

I also remember when the lvl 20 class quest armor was revamped only to be busted back down to what it used to be because too many people complained.  The all green armor was cool to look at, and I at least was able to enjoy it for the few days that it lasted.  Imagine how funny it was when they revamed the armor *again* and only changed it so that it was green.

I can't think of anything else at the moment, but if I do, I'll be sure to post it.

[ZeroByte]

Reborne wrote:

I'm new to EQ2 but from forum it seems EQ2 undergoes a pretty big overhaul somewhere along the years. could some old timers tell me what new players will be missing from the original EQ2 which sets out to be? I know PVP is 1 of them, any others?

I think the best way to understand the changes is to review the update notes for all the live updates since you last played. Then if there is anything you fail to grasp ask a more specific question in the appropriate forum.

[Guy De Alsace]

thyriel81 wrote:

Guy De Alsace wrote:

I miss:

• Mastercrafted (or legendary as it was then) being really good (coupled with rare tradeskill raws being rare)

Ill find it much much better as it is now. The high levels are still rare (back in old days i needed around 1 week farming or harvesting to get a 40+ spell at adept3, not to speak of having a master, barely anyone ever saw them) and the low levels make sense now, as it just was good for no one to have a lvl20 master when they costed some plat so no one would effort it for a toon to outlevels it within some days.Not to speak of low level mastercrafted armor, which was just useless at all costing 10p total for wearing it a week or 2.

I'm talking about rare as in you could harvest for 8 hours a day for a week and still never find a rare. At the moment higher levels are a little rarer than lower levels but are still far more common than they were. Which is good for mastercrafted as it stands now being not much better than average treasured for that tier.

Back in the day it was really something getting a tradeskill rare in loot. Now it just takes up loot space and there's not the buzz there once was.

[MadBarman]

Been playing since launch, soooo many things I remember from back then. Some I miss some I don't.I wont list them all but I did want to mention one.Bloodtalon, who else remembers camping/looking for/keeping an eye out for him every time you were in Thundering Steppes for about 3 weeks just for a single update?

[Tyrus Dracofire]

pre-LU13, your characters are stonger as you level up and getting easier to solo heroics with no master spells.

 AQ, (armor quests), now it been changed, it is gone if you outleveled and wont get it or get newer quest.

 "falling damages", none on classic eq2and you died with full amount, and now we have fall skills currently to reduce some or no damages depends on classes and races.

 new shiny quests, 2 version of "?"s, regular "?" and rare blue "?", so is the book pages that uses "!" instead.

Book quests replaced chest dropped books that make you kill 10 of that and 10 of this mobs, and now, we find missing pages on mob corpse drops, corpse drop pages are considered as rare pages and no trade.

 class profession quests removed the choice of class templates, so you get to pick what you want at first level.

Starting Island changed, you cant keep characters in starting island after 10th lvl, you get "exported" forcefully. i think last known "recorded" level was 34 or 44 in newbie island.

 boat quests to unlock new lands to Zek, Enchanted Lands, Everfrost, and Lavastorm, all other access quests removed.

Most hated Launch updates are LU13, LU24, and LU27, which messed up lot of players with craftings, guild status in inner city crafting networks, now it became consolidated. Combat revamps, lot of nerfings and changes of mitigations with armors and jewelries.

craftings get more simple to save pack slots, reducing the needs of sub craftings, so they took out refining crafts from the raw into ingots, etc.

 newbie city quests taken out and some get redo version of original quests.

Smurf cobolt armors and it was plastic looking "toy armor" until they hotfixed and made them darker navy tinted metal armors.

gone are classic character selection screenie with background towers, and we now currently standing front of Tunare's waterfall in the background screenie.

 so far, we still dont have a true "guild halls" for almost 4 years since launched.

[Terrak]

Each of the classes with a form of stealth used to have an individual form of stealth.  Stealth also had a skill level tied to it in terms of apprentice, adept, master...  Mostly it was just a huge pain.  They removed that and gave all stealth classes "stealth".  Now, granted, Hunter's Trap was a pretty neat ability since losing stealth meant that whatever nabbed me got snared.  Still, I think I'm happier with the change.  Particularly since invis moves at the same speed that we do now

[Tae]

Guy De Alsace wrote:

I'm talking about rare as in you could harvest for 8 hours a day for a week and still never find a rare. At the moment higher levels are a little rarer than lower levels but are still far more common than they were. Which is good for mastercrafted as it stands now being not much better than average treasured for that tier.

How is that any fun whatsoever? It takes long enough as it is going around collecting the rares you need for each tier without it taking even longer. I never played EQ2 at release because everyone said it was a horrible slog and these posts are really proving those people right.

[Brigh]

Four pages of replies and no word back from the OP?