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PC Games (Games) Role Playing (Games) Entertainment Games

EverQuest 2 Beta Confirmed, Producer Quizzed 43

Posted by simoniker from the more-refined-crack dept.
Kemanorel writes "After a couple years of development, several months of hints and previews, and four weeks worth of drooling after a live demo in Vegas, Sony Online announced that EverQuest 2 Beta sign-ups begin next Monday. Minimum specs are 1 GHz processor, 512 MB RAM, and a DX9 compatible video card with at least 64 MB of memory - not too bad. Get in line now!" There's also an interview with EverQuest II producer John Blakely over at GameSpot in which he mentions: "Currently we have over 80 people working on the EQII development team", before arguing that the sequel shouldn't necessarily siphon players from the original: "EQII is being designed to complement EQ in terms of the gameplay experience. EQII is a game that will focus most of our content on the individual and smaller groups, while EQ's endgame encourages large raid forces to play the high-level content."
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EverQuest 2 Beta Confirmed, Producer Quizzed More

EverQuest 2 Beta Confirmed, Producer Quizzed

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  • Remember when you look at the specs, the actual game won't be coming out for a while. So it's probably not as bad as it seems.

  • translation (Score:5, Funny)

    by Hythlodaeus ( 411441 ) on Monday April 26, 2004 @10:27PM (#8979158)
    EQII is a game that will focus most of our content on the individual and smaller groups, while EQ's endgame encourages large raid forces to play the high-level content.

    Translation: the EQ2 client/server chokes on large number of people in the same place at the same time.

  • They are lying through their teeth (Score:5, Interesting)

    by linzeal ( 197905 ) on Monday April 26, 2004 @10:38PM (#8979234) Journal
    These specs will never run the game at a decent enough level to participate in raids and the like. Currently 1 GB of ram [sony.com] is being prescribed for most latancy issues. If SWG [amazon.com] is using a lesser engine and they are having problems than I could not imagine that Everquest 2 will run on anything less than that.

  • Yet another MMORPG (Score:5, Interesting)

    by obeythefist ( 719316 ) on Monday April 26, 2004 @11:09PM (#8979541) Journal
    The MMORPG is here to stay! And here's another one. This one of course is a biggie.

    But what will happen in the market?

    Will all the EQ players upgrade to EQ2?

    Will nobody upgrade to EQ2?

    Or will all the players feel rich and buy time on both EQ and EQ2?

    What about all the other MMORPG's coming out? Will they steal time off EQ? Is the MMORPG market saturated yet?

    And, here's the one I really want to know about, will the open source community make their own sleek, efficient and free MMORPG that runs efficiently on a 286?

    • Re:Yet another MMORPG (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Xenkar ( 580240 ) on Monday April 26, 2004 @11:28PM (#8979731)
      The problem with free MMORPGs is that MMORPGs require a lot of cash to keep running. Bandwidth, hardware, and colocation cost a lot of money. They also tend to attract annoying little kids who have nothing better to do than play 18 hours a day. These kids tend to harass newer players, leaving the game with a rude community filled with l337 d00dz.

      The problem with the concept of opensource MMORPGs is that it makes it extremely easy for players to write their own bots to play the game for them, or a trainer of some sorts (speed hack, teleporting, seeing players through walls). Script kiddies will definitely ruin the game for anyone who wants to play without having XsploitsX's latest trojan infected trainer.

      Combine these two and you'll have a game that no one will want to play because it's lagging because it is hosted on some guy's webserver that he is running on his cable connection.

      • The problem with the concept of opensource MMORPGs is that it makes it extremely easy for players to write their own bots to play the game for them, or a trainer of some sorts (speed hack, teleporting, seeing players through walls).

        Sounds more like an improperly designed MMORPG. There are plenty of closed source ones that already have those problems. Bots aren't evil. The server shouldn't allow speed hacks, or teleporting, and if the client isn't supposed to see it, the server shouldn't include it in the
      • But if the server was open sourced as well, anyone could host a server, and compete based on customer service. Like role playing? Here's a role playing enforced server with non-rpers immediately IP banned. Want a normal server but without the immature losers? Someone will police it. Want a server that specializes in massive community events? Someone will make one. And since its perfectly ok to charge for these servers there will be a profit motive to make them.

    • Nothing much, yes, no, no, who cares, maybe, probably not, and ha ha.

    • And, here's the one I really want to know about, will the open source community make their own sleek, efficient and free MMORPG that runs efficiently on a 286?

      never. next?
    • And, here's the one I really want to know about, will the open source community make their own sleek, efficient and free MMORPG that runs efficiently on a 286?
      Ever play DikuMUD? :X
    • I think we'll see a situation like what happened with AC and AC2. The dedicated players won't want to leave the world and characters they love. New players will go for something else (WoW probably). My money says EQ2 never takes off.
  • EQII is a game that will focus most of our content on the individual and smaller groups, while EQ's endgame encourages large raid forces to play the high-level content.

    This just means the gfx engine can't handle the amounts of people it requires to create anything what made EQ great.

    Jesus, it also looks ghastly [gamespot.com].
    With the behemoth World of Warcraft looming over the genre I forsee that the only reason this project might not flop would be the well known IP.
    • It doesn't look too bad. It looks a lot like Morrowind, really. Shame about the spec requirements, considering that.
    • Yeah [gamespot.com], it [gamespot.com] looks [gamespot.com] absolutely [gamespot.com] ghast [gamespot.com]... I'm sorry, what were you saying? I wasn't paying attention...

      • All of those screenshots you linked to are of women. Is it really suprising that the programmers took a little extra time to make the female avatars look good?

        I interpreted the original comment that the game looks ghastly to be a reflection on the "style" of the game.

        For example:
        EQ2 trees [gamespot.com]
        WoW trees [blizzard.com]

        Basically I see this as a problem I had when I was taking art classes: I'm a perfectionist. I love everything to have nice sharp lines.
        That's the EQ2 way (from what I've seen).

        Conversly I can't describ

    • Way to follow p-a and not read your own conclusions. sheesh.

      watch some of the videos. look at some of the other screenshots released recently on www.eqii.com - yeah, they've had some bad ss picks, but in person, the game looks great.
  • that just means it will barely run ie lowest resulution looking like heres the true specs from the site recommended: Operating System: Windows 98/2000/ME/XP Processor: 2 Ghz or greater RAM: 1 GB 16x CD-ROM or DVD-ROM Video Card: DirectX 9 compatible. Pixel shader and Vertex shader compatible hardware with 128 MB of texture memory or greater Sound Card: DirectSound compatible audio hardware that sounds alot more belivable

    • Re:bah never go my minimum (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Babbster ( 107076 ) <aaronbabb&gmail,com> on Tuesday April 27, 2004 @12:47AM (#8980321) Homepage
      Yes, yes, and playing Half-Life/TFC on a 450-MHz K6-III with 128 MB of RAM and a 32MB TNT2 card isn't that pretty, either. Yet the game can still be fun on that configuration (or at least I had fun with it). I also had quite a good time with Unreal Tournament on that wimpy little thing.

      Fortunately, with a game like EQ[2], frame rates just aren't that big of a deal. It's not a twitch situation. So, if one is willing to put up with the duller graphics I'm sure that the minimum configuration will be fine (assuming one enjoys the gameplay, of course).

      • Actually, when I got half-life, I was running on a k6-II 400 with a voodoo 2 and the game looked awesome-- I had everything maxed out and still had a nice framerate. I think you might be doing something wrong....

  • Fan Faire Demo (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Fiz Ocelot ( 642698 ) <baelzharon.gmail@com> on Tuesday April 27, 2004 @12:01AM (#8979986)
    At the recent Fan Faire demonstration in Las Vegas they were running it on a system with a geforce 5950, 1gb ram, and I believe a 3.2 ghz P4.

    It looked awsome, and no choppiness with quite a few people all together fighting.

    They also accidentally ran it on a 512 mb system, on which is was a little choppy. But looks isn't everything.

    • They merely toned down a couple of the agressive graphics settings and the game ran smoothly.

      The min specs are really nothing too bad... maybe except for the ram requirement. Everything else is pretty much 'standard' by now.

      Just dont assume you can buy an MX440 and run the game.

  • No flash? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Dachannien ( 617929 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2004 @12:55AM (#8980369)
    In case you are interested in viewing the website without installing Flash, the detection is done in JavaScript, so disabling JavaScript prevents your browser from being redirected to their no flash page.

  • /posts this [sony.com] link and opens the floor to comments

  • EQ is an Online Community (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    3D graphics are icing on the cake for a game like EQ or EQ II.

    The most important aspect of a game like EQ or EQ II is the sense of "community" one gains while playing it. EQ has possibly the worst graphics of all the popular online role playing games, except for the oldest and largest of them which are completely text-based, so obviously cutting edge 3D graphics isn't as important a selling point as everyone here seems to think because EQ is still one of the most popular, if not the most popular, games in
  • Eq is a flawed game. Current mmo game design is time = power. Its a stupid premise and if there wasnt people in the world that have way to much free time on their hands it would fail. The genre can never break mainstream as long as it follows this formula. Except, of course, in korea.
    • Where the fuck have you been? It's not like just about every freaking computer game company in america isn't either supporting their own mmo game, or several, or developing one. Wake up, 1998 is over, MMORPGs ARE MAINSTREAM. Game companies are practically tripping over each other to make the great Everquest killer.

      It may be a stupid premise (to you) but it is obviously fun for enough people to make it profitable for other people. MMORPGs are not going away, and not for a long time.
  • I still remember buying everquest the day it came out, and taking the box with the pornographic elphette home, doing the install, then trying to log on for the next two days unsuccessfully.

    Oh yes, I can't wait to see what a clusterfuck Neverquest2's launch will be, but I'll watch from the sidelines this time. :)
  • Do the graphics bother anybody else? It's the strangest thing... I keep thinking that they look almost identical to early episodes of Reboot and the prerendered sprites of Might & Magic VI (example [rolemaker.dk]). Despite them being fairly cutting edge graphics, my brain keeps telling me "This is so 1998."
  • Press Release: http://www.sonyonline.com/corp/press_releases/0426 04_EQ2_beta_announcement.html

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