EQ2, Now w/ Recruit-a-Friend

[Khatovar]

If anyone has been thinking of multi-boxing a different game, EQ2 has just come out with a recruit-a-friend much like the one WoW has. Details @ the link.

http://everquest2.station.sony.com/recruit-a-friend.vm

Personally, I find this highly amusing as my husband and I restred our old accounts there the other day. not more than 4 hours after we patch up and first log in, as we're deciding if I can manage to multi-box the game, they post the RAF news. It's fate.

Edit - And yes, you can use it to box Per a ticket I submitted last night :


For the new Recruit a Friend promotion, yes you can use it to invite several of your own accounts. We specifically set the rules so that this would work and be attractive to many of our customers. As you noticed, this promotion can result in a substantial amount of free time. CSR Xavier "Spadaccino" M.

[BodyART]

I came back to EQ2 after a lengthy time away (I was a die-hard player before the EoF expansion, so I didn't really play much the past two years). I'm happy I only reactivated one of my two accounts. I made up a new account with RAF, subbed it, and within 12 hours I had my new mount and other rewards.

I had a conversation with the CS manager Kiara about some of the finer details of the promotion, and she also confirmed that the devs are hoping they get some people from the multi-boxing community to bite. She also clarified a bit of the 3X XP bonus details:

1) it applies to combat XP only, not quest turn ins or achievement point gain.

2) at level 80, the 3X XP goes straight into achievement point gain, so you do get some form of bonus to achievement. Considering how slow gain is at 80, however, this may not be a really big boost.



Also, the mount is 55% runspeed, and grants 10% XP boost in addition to normal mentoring XP when you are mentoring someone while on the mount. The evil mount makes the existing nightmare mount look tame. It's awesome. TO make it even better, the mount carries the new HEIRLOOM tag. that means you can freely trade it via shared bank slot to any character on your account. You can get one for each new player you reffer, so its possible to outfit multiple characters with these awesome mounts.

Plus, you get the full game when you sub. there's no need to buy software seperate (except if you want the latest expansion pack The Shadow Odessey.) This offer comes with Rise of Kunark and all expansions/adventure packs that came before it with all bonuses included to /claim.

I think this is a great time to go back to EQ2 for previous players, multi-boxers especially.

[Frosty]

Hrmmm... very interesting.

I was just thinking about EQ2 before I got to this thread. I tried to play it on one of my old computers when it first came out..but it ran like crap.
I just ordered parts to build a new PC.. I'm wondering what would happen if I tried to box it?

What's the max number of accounts any of you have managed on 1 PC?

[Khatovar]

I'm currently running 5 on my box. It runs fairly well on lowish settings with 6gigs. Once I bump up to 8 I should run rather well on medium settings all around. Unfortunatly, EQ2 is not the kind of game that's meant to be run on highest settings, so you'd have to find the tweak guides to see what out of the dozens of settings you can drop down for the most impact in saving resources.

[Frosty]

I had to drop ALL of my settings down last time and it still ran like crap. :P
But the new pc will be a quad core with 8gigs, so I might just give it a shot!

Thanks for the reply/info.

[Khatovar]

Yeah, I'm running a year old quad-core system. If I could be bothered, I could probably tweak it all right now to run fairly "pretty" settings across the board on 6gigs. Locking the slaves down to 10-13 fps instead of the 20-25 I could do in WoW was actually a big help, too.

Try this when you go to tweak your settings :

http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=17133

Maybe someone will come out with a newer one someday, but that still works in general.

[abodeofravens]

to clarify for khatovar (my wife) some specs on performance.

Her computer is a q6600 quad core intel, not overclocked or modified and a nvidia pos 8800gts 320mb. she recently started beta on windows7-64. the problems we ran into with wow with boxing was memory. 32 bit operating systems from windows are "capped" at around 3.25gigs (basically put 4 gigs in and thats the best you will get out of it). we had a few extra sticks of memory sitting around so we added it to her system 2x2gig and 2x1gig for a total of 6gigs. This drastically improved performance in WoW.

In WoW, and EQ2, each instance you run on a single box will take up to 1 gig of memory depending on what you are doing and how long you play in some cases. WoW is pretty terrible at unloading data from memory so its a bit more of a resource hog than EQ2. These are just estimates from our boxing experiences over the last 2 years or so and running a current build of northrend WoW or TSO EQ2. your system and performance will of course vary.

I have not found any significant problem with multiboxing on the nvidia card but we are going to be changing it to an ATI card for unrelated reasons. We will put a 1gig card in there just so the extra video memory is available for this or future games.

Regarding tools... we were unable to get keyclone to work with innerspace despite some great guides and feedback from the community here so we said screw it and did it with just innerspace. works really good so far and has an active development team working to improve things. There are some drawbacks that we are having some minor issues getting around but if you are building a box to do this it would possibly be helpful to know.

increase your monitor size if you want to box eq2. Monitors are dropping in price. you want to run in 1920x1440 or somewhere around there if you can because EQ2 has issues going under 1024x768. we have modified the interfaces and used innerspace to shrink the windows but its not a real shrink (at this point). so the more space you have the better.

any intel quad core processor will be enough to 5box on one machine. run vista64 or win7-64 and get at least 8 gigs of memory. memory prices are dropping through the floor on ddr2 so you can find some quality ram at really good prices.

get a video card with dual output and use two monitors if you can. do not cheap out on the video card but dont waste money on some $500 card that will be outperformed by a $100 card in 9 months. mid-range is best with more memory.

we have been pleased so far with innerspace box toolkit so far. its still in beta but was easy to set up. Some features are better than keyclone by far, but keyclone as features we miss in some cases. Rob should really do something about this so we can go back to keyclone which we like and support.

we put 4 instances on one monitor with high performance settings and her other monitor is fullscreen at medium settings until we get the upgraded memory in her system. its pretty sweet actually.

I hope some of this helped or was moderatly informative.

-never going back to wow-

[Frosty]

abodeofravens & Khatova,

Thanks for the link to the guide and the extra info.


WoW is pretty terrible at unloading data from memory so its a bit more of a resource hog than EQ2.
I had no idea this was the case. I'd always thought EQ2 was more of a system hog. But it could have been I had my settings up too high for EQ2 when I first played...and my computer was pretty crappy.



any intel quad core processor will be enough to 5box on one machine. run vista64 or win7-64 and get at least 8 gigs of memory. memory prices are dropping through the floor on ddr2 so you can find some quality ram at really good prices.



At the suggestion of one of my friend who builds PC's, I went with an AMD solution this time..I'm a little nervous..but we'll see how it goes.
Windows Vista 64-bit with 8 Gigs of RAM
AMD Phenom II 2.8GHz Quad-Core Processor
GeForce GTX 260 896MB 448-bit

This will probably be the first time I'll have ever seen a game with graphics not set all the way down.

The only thing I wasn't able to get this time around is a new monitor, let alone 2 of them. :S
I was pushing it getting the new PC ordered though. I had to buy my wife a new Coach bag as a peace offering! :P

I started out using AutoHotKey. Then I went to Keyclone on 3 PC's, and I used that for a long time playing WoW. I tried out Innerspace, and I LOVE Windowsnapper!
While waiting on the new parts to come in, I've been playing CoH/CoV and using HotKeyNet.

Just noticed I'm rambling..so I'll say thanks again for the info and hit the Submit button. :rolleyes:

[abodeofravens]

hey frosty-



definitely sounds like you did right by your system. the video card is very nice and the memory is where you need it. I just prefer intel but it really depends on what you are running honestly. nice rig you will have though.

I was a little suprised by the memory usage in WoW vs EQ2 now that khatovar andi went back. here is how it went...

pre- WotK we ran 4+1. I always play the +1 (tank). We were able to outland run pretty much anywhere with no problem with 4 on her box. the WotK came out and things got really ugly. she was unable to really travel (and I am not talking about phased areas breaking autofollow). it was stutter travel and became virtually unboxable from point a to point b in the "world". but summon everyone to a stone and run in a dungeon... no problems. we could run the dungeon with zero issues. we experimented. If we stayed close to the ground it seemed we could travel slightly better for longer. go fly up and poof... degrading performance almost everywhere.

after investigating further i noticed that WoW was using approximately 1gig of memory for each instance running after a short period of time. well on a 32bit OS thats more memory than your computer has so it was running on swap which means you are done. we added 2 gigs (to a total of 6 gigs) and the problem almost completely disappeared in WoW. still not optimal in dalaran with more than one toon but we could at least move the team on auto follow to do heroic violet hold without it taking 10 minutes. everywhere else was flawless.

so we cancelled all our accounts and went over to eq2 and decided to see how many we could box... we also had memories of how much resources eq2 used. and we found that our "memories" were when we were running computers that were made 4 years ago. thats a huge difference. with 6 gigs we can run 5 on one box. like khatovar has said its not the greatest but that honestly is not leaving alot of room for anything else, especially if you get into a high usage fight. so we are gonna push up to 8gigs and that should allow us to run in medium settings on all or high settings on one at least.

the box you are making... sounds like 5 box capable to me easily. only problem is your view space (monitors)... but that is something you can work towards as you go along if you wish... you will be quite happy with how the game looks though. start turning those settings up and see the game how its meant to be seen. you will be happy.

just seeing my first griffon i laughed out loud remembering what the wow griffons look like in comparison. I just keep asking myself "what was i thinking". khatovar helps set me straight.

:)

cheers

[Frosty]

We were able to outland run pretty much anywhere with no problem with 4 on her box. the WotK came out and things got really ugly. she was unable to really travel (and I am not talking about phased areas breaking autofollow). it was stutter travel and became virtually unboxable from point a to point b in the "world". This was exactly what happened to me. But I had no settings left to turn down! :P
I cancled my accounts while waiting to get the new rig.



only problem is your view space (monitors)
Ugh, don't remind me. The only possible good thing is I'll have 2 extra slave PC's now that should be able to handle 1-2 accounts with low settings.

You might just see me in EQ2 sometime soon. :thumbup: ...assuming I don't blow anything up putting it together.

[Lyonheart]

I have always wanted to max level a few toons in EQ2. This is going to get me to do it now for sure. I am not done with WoW. But I am raiding now and can shut off some of my accounts for a few months and fire up some EQ2 RaF style. I had two accounts in EQ2, never leveled any toon past 25. I kept coming back to wow because I had so many friends there.

EQ2 group size is? i cant remember. thought it was 6? If so, can most content be done with just 5?

[Frosty]

EQ2 group size is? i cant remember. thought it was 6? If so, can most content be done with just 5?
I think it is 6.

One thing I can't find (can't dig too deep until I get home) is how long the RAF lasts?
I didn't see it on the RAF page anywhere? But I do need more coffee... :whistling:

[Lyonheart]

question. I have two old accounts ( not active yet ) Can i do RaF by inviting two each? and when they all grouped they will all get the bonuses? Or should I scrap one account and invite 5?

[d0z3rr]

Wondering the same thing Frosty, I could not find where the RAF expires either.

As for performance, on my q6600 4gb 260gtx system, 3 EQ2's run very well. The only thing EQ2 seems to consume is memory. Otherwise I get great performance, seems wayyyy smoother than WoW too, even with better more detailed graphics. The animated cloth is awesome!

The only thing lacking would be the UI, I do not like the unit frames at all, nor the smallish damage text.

[Lyonheart]

Wondering the same thing Frosty, I could not find where the RAF expires either.

As for performance, on my q6600 4gb 260gtx system, 3 EQ2's run very well. The only thing EQ2 seems to consume is memory. Otherwise I get great performance, seems wayyyy smoother than WoW too, even with better more detailed graphics. The animated cloth is awesome!

The only thing lacking would be the UI, I do not like the unit frames at all, nor the smallish damage text.

I have 12 gigs on a new core i7 rig, Two 24' screens )So im hoping I can do 4 or 5 on it. ( 6 would be ideal)I have two PCs so can split them up a tad if needed.

[d0z3rr]

Wondering the same thing Frosty, I could not find where the RAF expires either.

As for performance, on my q6600 4gb 260gtx system, 3 EQ2's run very well. The only thing EQ2 seems to consume is memory. Otherwise I get great performance, seems wayyyy smoother than WoW too, even with better more detailed graphics. The animated cloth is awesome!

The only thing lacking would be the UI, I do not like the unit frames at all, nor the smallish damage text.

I have 12 gigs on a new core i7 rig, Two 24' screens )So im hoping I can do 4 or 5 on it. ( 6 would be ideal)I have two PCs so can split them up a tad if needed.

Without a doubt your rig will handle 6 easily, the i7 is a beast. You have plenty of memory too. I am so close to upgrading to a core i7 build (since it's a true quad core, has more cache, plus hyperthreading), but no games have challenged my rig and seems that eq2 wont either. So I might not have to do the upgrade.

Not to mention there are alot of different options to change in EQ2 to really get alot of FPS on your slave windows.

[Lyonheart]

Found this info in the RaF faq. its just like WoWs >> Upon successful conversion to paying subscription of every Prospect thereafter, up to a total of 25:

1-month of free gameplay added to the end of the Recruiter's subscription
One of two mounts
Saryrn Deathcharger or Armored Pinto
As long as Recruiter is grouped with a Prospect he or she will receive a 3x XP boost
This lasts for 90 days after Prospect becomes a Subscriber
Ability to zone to your Prospect at any time
This lasts for 90 days after Prospect becomes a Subscriber

some thoughts/questions about this 90 days. From what i gather, it is a good idea to gather as many "AAs" as you can BEFORE you reach level cap right? With that in mind, would someone be able to get one or more teams from 1-80 AND max out AAs in that time? Since the 3xexp is only for kills, would you want to hit level cap fast and then just farm AAs? or vice versa?

[Khatovar]

Well, there's 2 ways to do it. Plow to 80 and mentor down for AAs on all the stuff you missed, or level-lock to max AAs then level to 80 after you've got as many AAs as you can get {no more than 100AAs until 71...you can earn em, just can't spend them}.

It would really depend on the time you have to invest. My husband and I have a TON of time to invest, we're doing 1 team the lockdown way and the other will race to 80. If you don't have a lot of time, I'd probably race to 80 since mentoring to get AAs does not have a time limit like the RAF XP bonus does. You can always level up a newb to whateer level you want to mentor to since you're a multi-boxer. But then you'll miss a lot of the game, so if you like to take your time, take your time.

[Lyonheart]

Wanted to add this fact>. The person doing the Mentoring must be a higher adventure level than the Prospect and be riding this horse.
These can stack, if you have two people who are riding a mount Mentoring one person that person will get twice the bonus.
Once these mounts enter the game, they are no longer tied to any account status that is connected to RAF; they work with any player.
So from the sounds of it, I should be able to use my two old acnts and when my first team hits max level, i can group the two mains, mentor while mounted(4 noobs) and the 4 invited accounts will all get 3xRaF exp PLUS 20% from the two mounts? sweet!

[Lyonheart]

Well, there's 2 ways to do it. Plow to 80 and mentor down for AAs on all the stuff you missed, or level-lock to max AAs then level to 80 after you've got as many AAs as you can get {no more than 100AAs until 71...you can earn em, just can't spend them}.

It would really depend on the time you have to invest. My husband and I have a TON of time to invest, we're doing 1 team the lockdown way and the other will race to 80. If you don't have a lot of time, I'd probably race to 80 since mentoring to get AAs does not have a time limit like the RAF XP bonus does. You can always level up a newb to whateer level you want to mentor to since you're a multi-boxer. But then you'll miss a lot of the game, so if you like to take your time, take your time.

I have a lot of time. So should I max AAs first? then race to 80?

[Frosty]

I have limited game time due to the kids.
I'm starting to get more time though since my 3 year old son has started playing City of Heroes. :P

But I still have to help out with our 9 month old daughter.

RAF exp is nice, but I assumed it had a limit to it. It doesn't bother me one way or the other though.
I like to look around and try to see everything there is.

But this does bring up another question about exp and the mount....does that last after the 90 days?
If so, I would think it would be a good idea to have all accounts attempt to get one.

[Khatovar]

Honestly, I don't know if the XP bonus on the mount {10%} lasts after RAF. It might, but either way, once you have 1 toon at max level {adventure or crafting} you get bonus xp for leveling all other toons on your account. I will say, however, the RAF mount is one of the fastest, if not the fastest, mount in the game. So if not for the xp, you should try to get the RAF mount to have the fast mount. Otherwise you'll be paying a lot for slower mounts.

I would venture to guess that the XP bonus on the mount will remain, as the level 80 guild mounts have stat bonuses. And being that is is an heirloom and you can trade the mount back and forth across all toons on the master account further makes me think that the mount will remain with the bonus so you can continue to mentor your friends. So even after RAF runs out, you will still have {probably} the mount bonus, the max-level toon bonus {10% per max level, up to 50%} and mentoring bonus to work with for subsequent teams.

[abodeofravens]

If you are new to eq2 and have not experienced the game and its content, i would suggest doing the combat xp lock from time to time to play through the game. there is seriously alot of stuff to do and you can easily level past it. Based on our experience (khatovar and I) we will level past content with the 3x XP faster than we will earn AAs. this could be problematic but i have read also that level 80 you will earn 3x AAXP at the level cap. We are going to start our second team this weekend and not turn off xp and see how fast we can hit 80. so really there are two schools for boxers...

1. speed to 80 with 3x XP and do it mostly in dungeons or you will seriously hate life in regards to gear and spell upgrades that drop more abundently there. named mobs and dungeon quests will be your aaxp as you go so you will always be earning some AA points.

2. combat xp lock and quest in the varyious zones. there are sooooo many quests which reward aaxp and "rare" mobs to kill you can easily get a good set of aaxp going. We just unlocked from 26 and went up to level 31. We have around 25 AA points. by the time we unlock again we will be closer to 40 AA points based on the volume of things to do and people to kill.

I think i am going to like having both teams honestly. one locked and one unlocked. one thing you may want to do is "drop" a toon from a team and replace it. mentoring down to the various levels is fun and ensures you dont miss content that is "level appropriate" and there is a ton. We are going to leave at least one toon at level 51 to mentor down to. probably another at 61 and then 71.

if you want an example of the volume of things to do, this link is for the Group Dungeons... lists them all in order of difficulty...

Heroic Dungeon = shared dungeon
Heroic Instance (Major)= instanced dungeon
Heroic Instance (Minor)= small dungeons - boss instances - quest dungeons
http://eq2.wikia.com/wiki/Dungeon_Timeline

and a link for solo/duo instances
http://eq2.wikia.com/wiki/Solo_Instances

but you get the idea. tons to do. really comes down to your playstyle. :)

[Frosty]

Wow, there is a lot to EQ2 I never knew about.

Thanks a ton for all the great information! Hopefully I can get everything set up tonight and take a look around. :)

[Frosty]

Just thought I'd throw a note in here that I find odd about EQ2 and performance vs. WoW.

I have no problems at all running 6 accounts on my new machine.

But, on my laptop that was able to 3-box WoW, I can't even play 1 account of EQ2 on. It won't even move the 3D modle in the login screen with ALL settings off or at lowest.
And for some odd reason, the PC I used to play EQ2 on before, will barely run it at all now. And that PC has been upgraded since I played last. :p

I know my old machines were semi-crap..but I would think I should be able to play at least 1 account on my previous WoW 3-box computer... :S

[Lyonheart]

so all of these "instances" scale in dificulty with the size/level of your group?

[Khatovar]

Wow, that's weird, Frosty. No clue what's going on with that.

Lyonheart, not all instances scale, but some do. Splitpaw scales for sure, it has solo options and group options, regular and epic in some places and the mobs will raise in level as you do up to level 50. That is if you go in at 30 and do it, the mobs will be around 30. If you go in at 50, they'll be around 50.

All dungeons scale in difficulty the further in you get. For example, Fallen Gate. The first boss mob is level 21^^^ if I recall. The last is 28^^^. Not so noticable at lower levels, as you level up very quickly. You'd probably ding a few times on the way down. But in higher level dungeons, if you come in at the lower end of the dungeon level, you will probably not be able to complete the dungeon as it will quickly get more difficult. You'll either end up farming the first half or going to the second half of an earlier dungeon.