My Week in a Shattered Land (EQ2 Beta Journal&Tons'o'picts)

[Cobalt Katze]

So, the cat's out of the bag. Or perhaps rat in my situation. NDA lifted a week ago, beta access granted, graphics card upgraded, and I can bring you the Cobbi-sized beta journal for Everquest II.

The following is an account of two characters up to level 10 or so. I suppose I'll follow the traditional progression, following my screenshots as I go.



We begin with Katze, my priest on a path to become a druid. Though this screen shows his view about to leave the Isle of Refuge (noob training zone, to generalize), it's also a similar view you'll see coming in from the beginning Far Seas boat journey. Let me start off by saying that immersive is a key element to understanding how this game works. It has a very solid world, an overlying story, and everything you do aside from gameplay mechanics has something to do with unfolding this story.

The initial setup has a lot to do with drawing you into the world. You begin, conked out, waking up on a boat. The captain calls out and asks if you're okay. Aside from the tutorial movie phone voice explaining game mechanics, this offers a very intuative way to begin your journey into the world. Interaction with the world is introduced in a series of tasks on board the ship. This part of the game has been talked about to hell and back. You dock, choose your archetype (Priest, Mage, Scout or Fighter). One thing that most people leave out, is you also are rewarded with a special coin depending on what city you fall into ally with. Upon examining the coin, the voice of either Antonia Bayle or Lucan d'Lere presents a greeting into the world and presents the Isle of Refuge as a task to overcome on the path to finding a home.


Myself and two groupmates at a river near a waterfall. The third member is in the far back, frolicking with a beaver.

The Isle of Refuge is a very pretty place. There is a forest, a river, a shark-infested bay, several goblin encampments, a treehouse. Many areas to introduce not only the aspects of performing quests, overcoming tasks, and grouping with fellow players, but also the plethra of artistic detail the game has to offer.


On the Isle as well, standing in front of a torch in order to show off the lighting and shadows.

But before I delve into the game itself, let me first introduce the framework it is built around. The game is intended for several types of encounters. Encounters for the solo player, for the partially-grouped players, the fully-grouped players, and the raid-grouped players. Emphasis is, of course, placed on teamwork and participation. Solo content is, however, avaliable throughout all level ranges. What exactly is an encounter, one may ask? Yes, there are mobs/enemies in this game, and previously games like to assume that 1 enemy = 1 encounter. EQ2 likes to dish things out in realistic chunks. An encounter can be any number of enemies at once, from a single ghoul or hyena, to an entire pack of wolves or swarm of insects. These types of encounters are not meant to be delt with one enemy at a time, using tactics such as advanced pulling or separating to ensure the most safe route possible. These encounters are not dumb, they are realistic and will behave as a unit just as if you came upon another party of adventurers that pulled you to their camp. A pack of wolves is not going to just keep moving and forget about the member that got an arrow in his side and decided to run after a ranger. Just the same, a party of orcs will notice if one of their friends is under attack, but not in the concept known as "adds" or "links," as a functioning unit that all cons the same. If you target one member of an encounter, the rest of their names will become highlited. This does not trivialize pulling, nor does it make things easier. It just gives you a heads up on what to expect. In level 10+ areas, it is not uncommon to find a group of 4 enemies consisting of a healer, scout, and two warriors of sorts. However, these sorts of encounters are purely for the group to handle. A solo player will most likely come up against single enemies, or perhaps two related mobs, like a mother armadillo and her baby.


Myself and a random groupmate sitting in some foliage while we wait for pops.

Encounters = fun, challenging, and consistantly changing up what to expect in a grouping situation.


This is a shark, and has nothing to do with Encounters.

The next topic for framework of gameplay is the mystery called Heroic Opportunities, Heroics, or HOs for short. Let me emphasize, first off, that while there are similarities, heroics are not simply Renkei/Skillchain Part 2. What they are, is a way to collaberate with every group member in order to gain the upper hand on a difficult encounter through means beyond simply damage (though that result is still a main option.) A bad group will never use HOs, perhaps use one accidently, and remain chaotic in nature. A good group will use HOs when they can. A great group will be able to incorperate HOs into their general flow of combat.


An example of a Scout's Sneak ability, or rather the graphical effect of it.

During HOs, spells and arts are generalized and represented as generic icons such as swords or lightning bolts or stonehenge blocks. Every spell/art can be Examined to see which icon family it belongs to, so players can know what to use when the wheel pops up.

Heroic Opportunities consist of two parts that I classify as Discovery and Execution. During Discovery, a player from the group will use a spell or combat art that begins a potential reaction. The icon of what they just used is displayed in the middle, and the potential followups appear in a circle around it. During this portion, if any art or spell is used that doesn't corrospond to the suggestions of the wheel, the HO will be negated and have to be started over. This goes for any spell or art, such as healing or taunting, unless it is one of the designated icons. This is where most groups fall short of executing powerful HOs, they will function without yielding, not knowing they infact control that flashing icons in the lower right of their screen. If the correct spell or art is used, the Combat Wheel is formed, and the Execution phase begins. The starting chain always has a set stock of potential Opportunities. Usually 2 at random, and 1 rare. During Execution, you have two options: Complete the icons in the order they flash (if two are flashing at once, the order doesn't matter), or have a scout perform a combat art that switches the Opportunity to a different one from the set of potentials. I bet I've lost atleast 90% of people reading this by now, as it truly is something that must be experienced to understand. But believe me when I say that HOs are amazing, and will be one of the key determining factors to how well your group functions, or doesn't. This means pickup groups will be slightly more difficult, as the process is much less set-in-stone than the established Renkei/Skillchain vocabulary (This leads to that and provides this effect, this effect leads to that and provides a greater effect.)

I'll now be moving on from my analysis of key elements to gameplay that make EQ2 unique. By now I'm sure you can tell I am impressed. I'm not exactly certain what to discuss further, since I've already posted the majority of key elements to the game in my tri-MMOG writeup several weeks ago. Check that if you have any other questions, but for now I'm going to put up the rest of my screenshots and explain about each one, and I'm sure more elements of the game will come up.



This is my rather small, yet comfy, inn room in Qeynos. Housing is a pretty large part of the social element of EQ2. Every player, upon arriving in their chosen city, is granted a local inn room in that city's racial hamlet outside the actual city gates. Two races occupy every village surrounding Qeynos or Freeport. The theme in common with all Qeynos pairings is that they have something in common and can relate and build a better community around it. For Freeport, races are paired together that abhor one another, for purely mannurism-related quirks (gnomes vs. ratonga, both shady dealers competing for the customers), or for conflicts long ago (erudites and kerra, races that have always brutally hated eachother). In any case, you are welcomed in two very different ways into each city, both atmospheric in their own ways. You are also granted a room at your local inn. It is initially free, but has a weekly maintenance fee (very managable for newbs though.) Inside is a basic layout, and during the welcoming process you are given 3 pieces of furnature to begin decorating the joint. Even more pieces from shops, crafting of quest rewards can be found of course. Inside the actual city, there is one section dedicated to advanced housing. These houses are much more expensive, but have more floors, rooms, living space. The most expensive ones even have outdoor areas. All housing is instanced, but you can set permissions and visit other friends' houses to hang out at any time.



Crafting in the initial noob crafting tutorial. To go into a full-blown discussion on how crafting works would take me hours, but let me say that it is very very different, and very very enjoyable. Creating something of high quality is as rewarding an experience as overcoming a difficult named enemy. That's what the developers were going for, and I have to say they accomplished their goal.



Finally, a shot of my Ratonga Brawler character Cobbi, participating in a nearly-almost-all-ratonga group in one of Freeport's 4 inter-city "dungeons," The Sprawl. The rat on the left isn't actually picking her pocket or grabbing her ass, he's actually just crouching and being sneaky. During our whole group, he roleplayed the entire time. It was very amusing, and fun to play around.



Beautiful view from outside Qeynos, in the zone known as Antonica.



Also a shot from Antonica, to an area just to the right of the previous shot. I just wanted to clarify that, unlike FFXI, there is a z-axis for all zones, and every part of the zone is explorable, from running down those cliffs from the wall, to swimming under the water in that bay-like area that extends from Qeynos' moat.



Just me and Addy wandering one of the many back-alleys of Freeport. I forget what was "Sweet," but Addy certainly seemed to think so.



A better shot of Addy's character, still in n00b robe. She has a much cooler one now~



Look at my haaands.. gloowy.. This is the spell effect for a spell that every citizen of a city gains, which allows you to return to your racial neighborhood every 1 hour. There's no binding/saving in the game, so your homepoint is always where your house is.



While Qeynos is certainly a beautiful grassy sight, Freeport is located in more of the wasteland type area. This is not to say that it doesn't have it's beautiful spots, because it does have its beauty in a more dark industrial type of way. Far in the background is the floating castle where Lucan d'Lere resides.



One of those darker beauties Freeport provides, relates to the sourced lighting used very well in the game. Great stained glass windows, but they're not shining rays of light simply because it's day, the rays are actually sourced to the sun itself as it passes through the sky. The rays of light pass through the windows and streak in the scene shown in the picture, and then rest on whatever surface is in the way, projecting the image from the window onto the wall or player or NPC it comes across. Just a nice touch.



An example of some campy humor that does show up seldomly in EQ2. I just love this quote, because of the reference. Props if you can get the reference The game is not all serious and dry though, as this screenshot shows. There are some VERY funny things going on in the game, but they happen without breaking a sense of the overall world.



The last few screenshots will be showing off just how cool the world can look when it rains, if you have the right settings. I turned on an advanced graphical feature that basically allows textures to gradually become wet when the game rains. Walls get moist, dirt gets muddy...



...and even fur on my ratonga gets damp. Poor lil guy.



I'm not sure why, but I think this is possibly my favourite screen I've seen of the game this far. Moody, indeed.

Finally, just 3 more random pictures taken from my adventures today.



Myself and Addy again, just hanging out in the street.



My impersonation of Elmer Fudd in "That's Opera, Doc!"



Random battle against a snake~

And so that's where I'll leave things for now. The release date is ever approaching, betas for both WoW and EQ2 are beginning to be wrapped up, and I've been able to experience a good chunk of both games so far. At first wishy-washy, I'm pretty damn certain where I will be ending up for the next large chunk of time.

[SaitoH]

I hate you, Cobbie.

^_~

[GAAZ]

Yes..We all hate Cobbi.

[Cobalt Katze]

[Gryph]

WOOO! Sword-chucks rock!

I wouldn't mind playing this one. The first one looked ok, but this one looks great. Unfortunately I doubt I will. Gonna be playing City of Heroes soon, and Guild Wars when it comes out. I think those will be enough, at least for now.

Oh yeah, almost forgot. I hate you too Cobbi.

[SaitoH]

So, inspite of Cobbi's compelling post, I decided to forgo EQ2 simply because I only know a couple of people playing and they work evenings. I'll probably try it down the road, but I'm going to stick with WoW.

^w^

Ps. Now I don't hate you Cobbi. =P

[Cobalt Katze]

Oh, by all means, I wasn't trying to recruit a ton of PO folks to get up and play with me I just wanted to post my experiences up to this point, since I've also done so with WoW.

It's just of my opinion that WoW doesn't hold up for me as a long-lasting world that I'll involve myself in for the next year or more. To me, it's more of an experience akin to City of Heroes, where I enjoyed the hell out of it, but it wasn't a long-lasting experience for me. For this reason I'm glad I got to beta test it. It's great for a casual gamer, and for a PvP gamer that love to test their mettle against others, but I'm more of the MMO camp that enjoys very long drawn out experiences. FFXI was a perfect game for this, for me. One of the reasons it didn't last as long as it could have, for me, was because of a somewhat flawed execution of what should have been a very diverse gameplay system. I won't get into specifics, but just leave it at that. In any case, EQ2's coming out soon, I've chosen my "camp" so to speak, and we'll see how it goes from there.