Everquest 2 in 2023 | New Player, First Impressions

good game, needing sub for such amazing benefits ruins it for me, too much of an aggressive paywall. game is built for whales now, no intention to get new players to come in

The game was made in the dreaded Dx8 era... I think Sony tried to update the extensions to Dx9, but that seemed to introduce more issues. Not for sure what it is now, but the base code is mostly Dx8 and MS re-wrote a lot of Dx functionality when they went to Dx10 and the introduction of independent GPUs (Remember, tt wasn't that long ago that graphics cards did not have independence from CPU rendering). So modern era games run on different extensions and api for graphic interface. Plus Dx8 was before the introdcution of GPUs that offloaded the rendering from the CPU. So EQ2 was (still is?) a CPU hog.

There is a bad function with Dx8 and multi-core processors. Originally when multi-cores came out, you had a natural 'speed hack' going because the game would be split on the cores and only grab the info from the main core. So you where skipping all the processes from the other cores and the speed hack play was on. It was hilarious, you could run the full length of a zone in a couple of seconds.

I agree with everything you said in the video, however from my point of view the problem I'm having is more than the game, and the community... limiting the use of chat in my opinion kills a new player right from the start ' start... not being able to ask for anything in global or find parties without Allaccess is stupid... I understand that perhaps this was done to avoid goldsellers who can spam in the chat... talking about Allaccess yes... I also agree that the way they try to convince you to buy the subscription is atrocious... I don't like it either and it breaks my immersion, even finding online guides for the game isn't easy or they don't exist... usually when I play a new MMO I always try to find guides online to get an idea of how to advance and progress but in EQ2 I didn't find anything, btw Dungeon Agonists I find them fun (at the beginning) but then after a while they become boring and repetitive, but yes I agree that it is the best way to level quickly (obviously if you have an active XP potion).

Gotta do project 99 or project quarm EQ classic!

We need eq3 at this point i played the hell out of both of these games and they lost the ball with agnostic dungeons.. hooefully we will get a new game in the future but honestly i might die before that.. thats how little faith i have at this point. They do not listen to its communuty at all.

I would stay on the starter island killing respawning orcs until I'd get the title of Destroyer of Orcs.

Max level is 80.
edit: or was, at least when i quit.

I played this game for like 9 years back when it was big. Big part of the game is the population and community it had. Thats what you are missing out on. Some of the dungeons that would take dozens of players.

Lorbros here, Hello Nagafen.

You missed heritage questlines too. The world really is amazing.

fidgets cutely

my mum's everquest guild timed her contractions with me in 99 lol

There is an option when installing the game to install all the game and play or have it install slowly but let you jump in faster. You chose the one that installs slowly in the background. You can avoid that by making the correct selection. Just fyi

mercenaries ruin the game for me. its basically turning on God-mode. its a hacking cheatcode. skill bloat redundancy... dungeons are just AE diablo style mindless hack n slash. zzzz

daybreak sucks they ruined h1z1 too

a huge issue was eq2 release was performance, it ran like shit on even decent pcs. great graphics, that was a problem. i tried wow 2 weeks later out of frustration. never looked back

Hey dalaron, my mom bought me a new game at yawd sale

Absolutely agree w/ you about the grafics. The style somehow feels gorgeous to me nowadays.

1, 2 & 3 of your The Bad are all eliminated when/if you play in a newly released TLP server. TLP's are super fun and as much as you played this game via this video, it's almost a different game. Hope you try one out and have fun. Nice video. Oh yeah, you're a scuffed noob in how you used your abilities...lol.

'Journey is half the fun' right? Ahhh, the memories, the frustrations. :) ... yes, that phrase is a weak in-joke.

Really like this content. GG

you missed out on the level 20 armor questline by doing the agnostic dungeon :0 the questline is very cool, always made getting out of the starting zone and into your first major city exciting

I kind of see DDO and EQ2 in the same light as both have history of changing companies, microx, and just that they are old.

Man i miss this era of gaming. Guildwars was fun

In Guild Wars 1 you could have bot allies in your group to do missions or for exploring.

The problem was that EQ 2 wasn't EQ 2 at all it was a game that was nothing like the original other than the names of things.
So when EQ fans played it most of them hated it as it was really weird if you were used to EQ.
Had they made a real EQ 2 it probably would have been so much more successful as it isn't a bad game it is just not really EQ 2.

I was there on November 8th 2004...

Lol. Sony and daybreak are both sht. Pay to win. Pay to lose. Pay to live. Pay to die. Pay pay pay. Just go play solitaire. Or poke your eyes out. Anything is better than daybreaks sht.

Loved EQ2. Graphics if you had a good pc unrivaled at the time. Still stands up to newer mmos. Loved the crafting, and they made questioning more linear... Instead of just guessing what you should be doing.

the music is top tier. its amazing.

I had a lvl 60 (or was it 65?) monk in EQ 1. My friebds and i all dropped out of high school to play it no joke, we were leaders for our guuld until i was taken to a wilderness program in utah kidbapped in the middle of the night. The next day my friends raided such an inportant spot without me and i wasnt able to get a really sought after piece of loot. In the end i was able to sell my monk which my parents handled without my assistance but they gave me the money. I had thousands of hours logged everquest was my life back then and i havent played a mmo since

Blizzard had such a great reputation back then that they could literally print their own money. Everquest was just one game. Being able to create a similar game but with that following only assured EQ2 was going to fail. Plus the fact that EQ2 changed the way EQ played so much it was off putting to the playerbase. Locked combat, having your hand held, no more corpse runs or camping did not sit well with EQ players. Plus, EQ players already had thousands of hours put into EQ. So they ended up splitting their fan base: some stayed with EQ, some went to WoW.

Plus the hardware requirements were horrific. You needed a high end rig to run EQ. They did everything wrong with EQ2

this is a freaking awesome video. I remember playing this game hardcore for two weeks back in 2004 which is a shame considering EQ was what got me into MMOs in the first place.

I really miss the pure simplicity of these classic MMOs. I really dont care for the way games like FF14 force feed players their mediocre "story" like on railroad tracks you cant espace from and on the other hand you have titles like Black Desert Online with meaningless over the top complicated game play loops build around the pay-2-win shop and hardly any substance behind its looks.
I really hope games like Throne and Liberty and Chrono Odessy bring back worthwile MMO experiences in 2024.

LOL EQ 2 ANT FREE TO PLAY ITS FREE TO TRY LOL

I loved EQ2 when it came out because I played EQ when it released! I had tons of fun in these games! I still play WoW every now & then! FFXIV is my main MMORPG of all time! I may try to get back into EQ2! This brought back may pleasant memories with my friends!

Meanwhile, Diablo 2 having mercenaries is just trash I guess?

they should have made everquest next.

I was excited for the birth of my nephew so i could teach him how to heal in eq2 i was going ot make him my little side kick. then right after he was born they came out with companions lol!

I go back into this game every so often. And still to this day, my character, and house from 2005 is still waiting for me. The charm is still strong.

Many of your gripes with the leveling experience are just modern MMO design. They want you to get to the endgame quickly so you can play with the rest of the player base. World of Warcraft created the endgame rush mentality, every other game just tries to do the same. Really the only way to avoid this is to play one of the many horizontal progression MMOs

Any suggestions is wood elf good for invisibility or are the totems of invisibility so good that that spell is pointless?

My dude your graphical settings are set super low. 😂

Those skelly sounds bring me back. They're the same sounds the skellies had in EQ1. My Necromancer main got very used to those cackles.

I want to add, Shift + Number combos definitely do work. I've got all my character with them

Hi buddy. You really need to buy the last expansion ballads of zimara its very player friendly. and you can use the token to get your toon to 125 the nstart the sigline in splendor.

Its kind a completly different game when u run heroic groups . im back since 2 years now and i understand what you mean.

But if you really wanna show your subscribers how EQ2 is now you can only if you experience the high level Game. Finding strats out in heroic dungeons with other adventures together, its way more funnier then it was in the old days.

Greetings from Arevalo/lordsalem from AB server=)

PS: we have a nice guild independe discord channel for everyone in AB too. Feel free to add me if you wanna come back or just lfg groups!=) elbuenomalo

I have a beast of a computer, ryzen 9 5950x, aorus rtx3080 waterforce 12gb ram, 128gb system ram, 2 2tb nvme and 1 4tb external on a USB 3.2 port. Dual loop, 2x d5 pumps and 2 480mm radiators. Also 2x 32" 4k monitors. I can easily at max settings push about 160fps 99% @ 1440p. GPU temp hovers around 42c and cpu around 50c. Nothing wrong with the game play no freezes or anything. Of course, I think playing on a workstation system isn't a good measuring stick. I used to play this game back in the day on a system much less than this with 1080 monitors and dual graphics cards with 1gb of video ram. Wasn't nearly as nice looking back then, but that was in 2004 - 2007 then 2009 - 2011 when I quit for 12 years.

The skeleton laugh is the skeleton laugh from EQ1.

Game looked fantastic for it's age until they barred Reshade from working. Not to mention removing a ton of ingame graphics options because the potato PC people kept crying. Without, it looks completely outdated and bland.

brings back memories..i ended up going over to WOW because my friends played there. but i was a die hard EQ guy. it got overwhelming though...and WOW is starting to be the same way. so much stuff to do that you get paralysis