EQ 'Shadow of Luclin' -- Pretty Graphics, Ugly Release 316
For starters, everyone reading this should understand that persistant gaming of various forms is here to stay. EverQuest will likely be around for at least a few more years, and its successors will probably take over the gaming industry for several reasons: first, they offer a different and more lucrative revenue model; second, they offer some intriguing secondary revenue possibilities; oh, and third, there are the players who actually seem to enjoy adding more social elements to their gaming ;-)
EverQuest has been a rocky road since day one because the people developing it have never truly understood their market (this can be evidenced by how many customer service policies have been reversed over time). Now, on the eve of their most hyped release, they have done the unthinkable: They released a product which has substantial crash-to-desktop bugs and made the update process so painful as to be impossible for many players. Now, with Quake you'd say "that's awful, but they'll fix the bugs and players of the old version will be fine for now". With EverQuest, everyone gets patched at the same time, and no one can play until it's done and works.
To give some examples: every player is now required to run Microsoft's DirectX8; Minimum memory and processor specs have gone up, and if you dare to run the new expansion you will have to have at least 256MB of RAM just for the core functionality (they provide a way to back out most of the new UI stuff for those who have 128MB of RAM, but I'm told its almost unplayable); 512MB of RAM is suggested!
Ok, so what was the first day like? Well, the servers were down for most of the day, when they were supposed to just be down for a night. Then, when they came up, it seems that Sony did not provide enough network bandwidth for the patching storm that ensued, so no one could patch (and thus, no one could play) until a crittical mass of players gave up and went to bed.
Worse, the patching program was intolerant of the network failures and would leave droppings that would prevent subsequent attempts to patch. I required 2 reboots, 5 file deletions and 2.5 hours to finally patch and run.
"So, how is it?!" you ask? Well, it's a whole lot better than it was, but it's really still not there yet. The graphics are actually disorienting because of their quality and the new hardware T&L acceleration from DX8. Turning around makes you feel like you live in the land of smooth scroll. The facial feature selection for humans is very nice, but for the Iksar (the lizard race), it's rather sketchy, and not much different from before. Horses are cheaper than some had suggested (8,000 platinum minimun). New models for summoned pets and other character-related models like "wolf form" are very slick. The new zones seem to stress their size quite a lot (it's hard to accept that humans would build on such a scale).
I've yet to see the new race, as I assumed that everyone would be starting those characters and the server would be quite slow in those zones.
There are some problems, though, and I think Verant should have held off on the release until they were finished. First is the much anticipated Bazaar zone, where players will be able to become merchants (to some degree which is not yet clear) and sell their goods automatically. This functionallity is off, and still being worked on.
Second, there appear to be a number of bugs. Teleportation while in the new zones was supposed to take characters to a central zone ("The Nexus") from which they could then teleport to their destination. (Currently, that's not the way it works: 10-20 seconds after teleporting, everyone in our party except for the person who teleported crashed to the desktop with no warning!)
There are some problems with spells. Someone pointed out to me that low-level wizard spells do not animate at all, so its hard to tell that your wizard is actually doing anything in a fight.
Overall, I'm going to give this release a 4 on a scale of 1 to 10. It's pretty and in a month, it will likely be the best MMORPG on the market, but again -- it's just not there yet. This release hurt a lot of players who didn't even want to buy the expansion yet.
Some key resources for those who are trying out Luclin are:
- The zone connection map on eqatlas.com.
- Also, Allakhazam is adding items and quests as fast as possible to keep up.
- Expect lots of news on Everlore and the Everquest Realm on castersrealm.com.
Enjoy!"
Guess I'll wait.. (Score:3, Informative)
Fair, but it's getting better (Score:4, Informative)
The article is fair, but the expansion had only been out for 36 hours when it was written and already they have had one patch which has cured many of the worst software problems, and are promising more to come in the next few days.
I have every confidence that this will be a great game by the end of the week and everyone has forgotten about the launch problems.
As for the requirements, they are high, but that most people who buy a new computer now will get one that easily meets them. And they have to target the game at people who are likely to be buying it soon, not at those who last upgraded their PC 2 years ago. I'd rather they pushed the spec and made a nicer game than just went for the lowest common denominator and lose out to other games.
The worst problem I've got is that the expansion is not yet available in the UK!!!
But if you've not played everquest I have to recommend it to you. Yes there are some problems with this update but they'll all be sorted out in the next week or so and it will continue to be the best game around at the moment.
Major Bugs (Score:4, Informative)
It's painful.
I've decided just to hunt in the empty Zones and wait a month before doing any serious Moon hopping.
Enjoy the game everyone, it's pretty. (buggy =)
Check out the Buggy Naked Pictures from the expansion [ezboard.com]. I guess someone didn't have all the files downloaded or DX wasn't loading properly. Makes for interesting grouping... Later, Binestar
128 MB is ok! (Score:3, Informative)
and without the new textures, can play very well thank you.
Updates (Score:5, Informative)
- It's becoming obvious that a fair number of Win95 users are pissed that the game they bought and ran under Win95 has suddenly stopped working [everlore.com]. Note: this has nothing to do with the fact that the expansion does not run under Win95, but that old, installed versions of EQ were updated (via the patcher) with a game that refuses to run under 95!
- Verant has been BUSY! There is now a patch for some of the larger problems [castersrealm.com] that people were seeing. I was personally bit by the auto-follow, crash-to-desktop bug several times
:-(
This is not a bad release, really. It's just pointing out a lot of the problems that games now face when everyone gets updated/patched at once. The artificial lines between people running "Luclin" and people running "the old EverQuest" are very thin....Hype and Timing is what made this Ugly (Score:2, Informative)
This combined with lots of hype (every time you log into EQ they send a message saying Luclin is comming) left Verant feeling like they had to make deadlines. Luclin wasn't even in most stores when it was supposed to be. I know people who preordered and were supposed to have it delivered by now who still don't have it.
All the hype means 400,000 subscribers all foaming at the mouth to see the changes. So they log in as soon as the system is back up. The catch? All of them need updated files, and none of them have them. That by itself isn't bad, but when they had trouble updating their servers, the system didn't come back up till 4:00 California Time, which means that all of North America was in primetime for playing.
Since the server came up at the worst time of day, The patch servers got hit hard. Most users were stuck waiting to get their updates because the patch server couldn't handle the load. Eventually over the night Verant got more patch servers up and things started moving more quickly.
By 5:00 AM California time, (8:00 AM for me) the traffic jam was gone.
In Short it was all hype and incredible bad timing that made it such a mess.
Re:Updates (Score:3, Informative)
Had Verant been busy earlier, and not rushed a pre Xmas release, they wouldn't be busy right now.
This is bad. This is bad software. This is bad beta-testing.
Re:MUDs will live forever (Score:3, Informative)
Well, the Windows-supplied telnet client is icky. I highly recommend PuTTY [greenend.org.uk] for all of your Windows telnet and ssh needs.
Hrm. Well, except for MUDding, actually. A good MUD client really helps. I seem to recall that zMUD was a good Windows MUD client, though it might be shareware. (These days, my only interaction with Windows is supporting it at work; no call for MUD clients there, and I use tinyfugue under Linux at home.)
--Phil (One of these days I'm going to get around to turning tf into an IRC client, just for fun.)
Re:If you're interested in seeing Luclin graphics (Score:2, Informative)
http://makeashorterlink.com/?X3521263
Re:There are players and there are whiners (Score:1, Informative)
Actually, win95 isn't supported under the OLD version anymore. That's the whole problem... If you bought EQ or Kunark last Weekend, on Monday you were screwed.
I'm end-of-lifing your car next week. I know you just bought it last Sunday, but as of Monday you will no longer be permitted to drive it.
Cheer up. It's for your own good. The newer cars have much better safety features...
Re:Interesting... (Score:1, Informative)
2) Have someone in your guild group you up and do a group port.
3) Duel someone and have them nuke you.
4) Target an npc using a ranged attack, let it kill you.
5) Wait for the
Re:Fair, but it's getting better (Score:3, Informative)
If Verant had tested this thing properly they would have easily discovered that:
All in all it was a shocking, inexcusable release. Everyone expects glitches, but this amount showed they really didn't test the thing at all. And the rollout was much too short. They should have been rolling stuff out into the client for weeks before to catch these kinds of bugs.