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!"
Society... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:MUDs will live forever (Score:5, Interesting)
Nah, the addictive thing there is the notion of "points", which represent a goal that is easily optimized for. In EverQuest and various muds, the points are "pieces of equipment" or stats or something similar. Your brain likes optimizing for clear goals. Which is why you karma whore on
--LP
Re:MMORPGs taking over? I hope not. (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's my 2cp on the whole interaction deal. First off, Everquest has had naming filters in for the vast majoritity of its implementation to prevent L33TH4x0r from joining yoru group. You may see one or two lucky bums skip past the filter at the beginning of the game, but the GM's don't cotton to CrapyHedd the troll on thier server.
Secondly, and more importantly, Everquest is a completley social game. If you don't like dealing with people, you better not play. That unfortunatley can be a problem for non-peak hour players, but most people seem to enjoy joining a guild, making friends, and finding new ways to complement each others play styles. You'll find on the older servers many of the players are mid/late 20's to late 30's. Most have jobs, and are probably upstanding citizens looking to unwind by goreing a Dervish Cutthroat with thier newly acquired Crystalline Spider Fang. I think these are the types of people who want a challenge in the game they play, and no matter how much is sucks, a penalty for when you lose the battle.
I used to like simple single player games, StarCraft comes instantly to mind. I used to be a good player, but now you can't even log into Battle.Net and find a friendly game. Now it's just who's hack works the fastest. It's rediculous. Everquest makes cheaters a thing of the past.
In closing, I'd suggest everyone bent on 1 player shoot em up games to go out and puchase the old world of Everquest. Fire up a newbie and start having fun. 99% of you will be hooked, and buying expantions before you know it.
The market for single player games like Myst/Duke Nukem et al will always be there, but in a year or two, you watch...between EQ, AC, AO, DAoC, and Star Wars Galaxies which is due out, MMORPG's will rule the industry as the money continues to roll in long after the game was sold.
Thanks for the review... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm glad to read that this release is not so great. Why? Not because I work for the competition, but because Verant literally kicked me out after wrongly claiming that I was "cheating." Class action law suit anyone? I heard that I am not the only one in that boat.
I have been with the system since the beginning. I went thru their buggy eervers, buggy releases, awfull support, you name it. You have it. It appears that they made their decision when some sysop was logged in (which is something exceptional as they usually are not here when you need them, like when all your objects disappear because of long lasting bugs.) So the guy sent me a message to verify if I was in front of my machine while I was feeding the cat or on the johns. And since I didn't reply right away. The next thing I got was a mail to get lost. No proof of what they were claiming is shown, unless they scanned my machine and they would have find nothing wrong.What followed was a message exchange (think replies one week after my original message), ending to nothing, nada, zip!
Verant is the Sirius Cybertronics company as Douglas Adams defines it in the HGTTG book. A company whose complain department covers the landmasses of the 3 first planet in whatever solar system. A company so badly managed that the bulletin board needs to be censored by customers of them who can't get their hw working, connection to their servers, drops, items lost, crashes bugs. Remember their intent for scanning software on your PC. You should have read the BB.
That was fun!
I won't be able to get my character back, neither pay their subscription every month. In one way, I should tell them thank you for curing me from this habit of login and meeting friends from all around the world I was talking to every night.
Hi guys! If you wonder where I have been, you know now. My ultimate request to Verant was to be able to log one last time (even if they judged me guilty for something I didn't do) and let the people I had fun with daily online know that I wouldn't come back. I have still to read a reply from Verant support. It's been 3 weeks now...
PPA
Re:Updates (Score:2, Interesting)
I find it very hard to feel sympathetic here, for two reasons: 1) They're playing this game on an OS that is nearly seven years old, and 2) in at least two places Verant has put a warning saying that the minimum requirements of the game could change. The first is in the EULA, saying they can change it at a moment's notice. The second (for you people who don't believe in the validity of EULA's) is located on the game box itself. Under the minimum requirements is a statement saying that "The minimum requirements are subject to change as the game progresses." (I forget the EXACT wording, but that's pretty close.) It was on the Shadows of Luclin box, the recent EverQuest Trilogy release, and as far back as Scars of Velious (which I also picked up when I bought SoL).
Verant had been warning that the system requirements were going to go up. People should have been prepared for that. By what I'm hearing from the Windows 95 camp and the people in the game chat complaining about video cards, they weren't... and there's no excuse for that.
Go ahead and mark me down as flamebait... I've said my $.02.
Re:There are players and there are whiners (Score:2, Interesting)
Now that that is out of the way, I'll take issue with your little Verant love-fest.
I played on Veeshan for nearly a year and a half with 7 different characters, so I have some experience with this game. Probably not as much as you, Mr. UberGuildBoy, but hey, I'm not really a n00b anymore, either.
I've been playing DAoC for a month now, and have thoroughly enjoyed it. Launch day went *very* smoothly for Mythic. They had the bandwidth, they had the patch servers, and their customer service Doesn't Suck (TM).
I hadn't cancelled my account in EQ yet because I have been waiting for SoL. I attempted to patch - and after bluescreening in WinXP, I finally patched - 5 hours later on a 2MB connection. When I started, I got the lovely "No 3D Device found." - Uhh, yeah. GeForce3 Ti500 and WinXP/DirectX 8.1. So, repatch. Feh. Finally got in - and lo and behold, the same little idiots were still around, still screaming in
I logged in to DAoC, got a patch - 1 MB, 300K/sec.
I cancelled my account today.
But DAoC sucks too, all you EQ fanboys/girls should just stay there and then go to EQ2 when it comes out. Please. We don't need you in DAoC mucking that up too.
Verant's attitude towards their customers is terrible, they care little about uptime because they know they have a captive audience. You'll rant and rail, but you won't pull your account, because you're UBER. You'll cry, but you won't quit, because you need that R4re sp4wn, d00d. You'll also say, "Good, quit, less lag for me," and laugh it off. Personally, I'm glad to be gone. If EQ is your thing, great, but don't excuse Verant's poor planning by saying "You try to deal with 400,000 customers!" It's called running a business. Do it competently, or eventually, you will lose.
And Verant is losing. All these little 'touches' lately reek of fear. Not publishing server counts any longer "because our competition might use them for bad" is bullshit. Numbers are dropping. Adding horses is now part of the Vision - but at one point, we were told that horses couldn't fit in the character model file. Necros couldn't have Iksar pets b/c they wouldn't fit in the character file. No spectre pets - oops, we always planned spectre pets! And the brutal, unrelenting use of the nerf^H^H^H^Hbalance stick was pitiful. Hybrids were shit on for years, then a half-hearted
All the underlying problems with EQ - corpse runs, unkillable mobs, camping, d3wdz, and 'see no evil/hear no evil' fanboys like you - are only now covered by the thin veneer of pretty new T&L graphics.
*Whew* Sorry for the extended rant, but I know of SO many people who are so sick of EQ. Yeah, we're leaving. But my question is: Why are the rest of you staying? My honest query to you.