Bored Of Your Current MMO? Try EQ2

If you enjoy PvE, try multiboxing EQ2. I will list some reasons why EQ2 is structured to be a very entertaining game to multibox:

Class Synergy - VERY well done. Certain classes work well together and very specific strategies can be formed using certain class combinations. Combine damage methods (Melee/Ranged/Caster) with damage types (elemental/noxious/physical etc) with many buffs and debuffs. I can't speak enough about how each class works together and how much fun it can be forming the "Perfect" team (there isn't one, but there are several guidelines to creating a functioning team).

Advanced Autofollow - This is my opinion, but I believe EQ2 has the most advanced Autofollow component. Melee will continue attacking without breaking autofollow and can strafe without breaking autofollow. When targetting a mob or a player who is targetting a mob, strafing will cause autofollowers to strafe around the mob. With practice, when engaging a mob you can swing your main around a little to cause your follows to swing themselves around to the mobs backside automatically. Alts will also make a very good effort to follow your footsteps as precisely as possible. I've walked them across narrow paths with little difficulty.

Massive Amounts of Content - For both solo and grouped players. Dungeons are plenty, multiple available for all levels. See this link to approx half the amount of group specific zone available (there are much more smaller instanced zones within each of the larger public dungeons) http://eq2.wikia.com/wiki/Dungeon_Timeline

Forcive Answer To The Grind - There are 2 sets of adventure levels in EQ2 - Adventure XP and Achievement XP. Adventure XP you gain the usual ways - Questing, Killing Mobs, Discoverying New Areas. Achievement XP can only be gained by killing a Named or Boss Mob (and only once for each Named/Boss), by turning in Quests, by Discovering New Areas and by Looting Prized Items. Achievement XP is so important that leveling by Grinding is really not a good idea, as you will miss out of a lot of Achievement Points. Achievement Points also offer another goal to keep you motivated while playing the game. Your character's role in battle can be customized further through Achievement Points.

Challenge - EQ2 is not easy. WoW is easy, AoC is easy, WAR is easy. EQ2 releases content which keeps up with the raiding and small group playerby adding dungeons which have very nicely scripted and unique battles for those at lvl cap. Once at cap, while there are a lot of dungeons available to you, you must start with the easiest and progress towards the more difficult. Epix are not for free.

Combine all this with a +200%XP Bonus Recruit a Friend and the ability to download the entire game online, as well as expansions, makes EQ2 worth a try. Trials accounts can attain lvl 20 and are 14 days (but with 200%xp, you will make 20 in 2-4 hours.

Nektulos server contains several boxers on it. The community is boxer friendly.

More Info:
Mob Grouping
Mobs are by themselves or linked in Encounters. An Encounter is a set of 2 or more mobs that will autopull when 1 member of their encounter in pulled. Certain AE spells are Encounter Based, meaning they will only affect mobs of the targeted Encounter. Other AEs, called Blue AEs will affect all mobs in an area, whether or not they are part of the targeted Encounter.

Having said this, mobs of different encounters will still assist each other, meaning that if you are not careful, you could pull 2 or more entire Encounters.

Mob / Encounter Difficulty
Mobs of the same type can have a wide range of difficulty rating. The rating system uses Up and Down Arrows to determine this. This can be seen on the UI frame of the Mob. The system ranges from the weakest mob having 3 Down Arrows (vvv) to the middle range, having No Arrows, to the most difficult, having 3 Up Arrows (^^^).

Encounters are also rated based on a same-level player in difficulty using the words Weak, Average, Heroic, and Epic. Weak mobs are just annoyances, even for the solo player. Average are bested by the solo player. Heroic is meant for groups of 2-6 equal level players. Epic is meant for multiple same-level groups, the amount which is included after the word Epic (eg. Epic X2, Epic X4, etc). Encounters can be defeated by fewer players then recommended if the group(s) outlevel or outgear the Encounter. Heroic and higher Encounters offer bonus Encounter Experience once defeated, on top of the individual Mob Experience.

Mobs can be outleveled and Greyed Out. There is a formula for pre-20 mobs, but past mob-level 20, if your character level is more then 10 levels higher, the mob will be Greyed Out. Greyed Out mobs / Encounters will not provide Experience, and another importance, which leads us to loot...

Loot
Equipment is categorized in terms of quality by the following terms, in order of rarity:
No Term - No special term categorizing this gear. Basic trash gear. No or few stat bonuses. Found in Small Chests.
Treasured - Your basic gear with stat bonuses. Found in Treasured Chests or better.
Legendary - Much better then Treasured Gear. Stats are equivalent to Treasured Gear approx 5 levels higher. Found in Ornate Chests or better.
Fabled - The highest tier of gear normally available to a player. Equivalent to 10+ levels of Treasured Gear. Found in Exquisite Chests.
Mythical - Each of the unique class-specific weapons and a small handful of other pieces of gear (mostly given out as Limited Special Event Rewards) are classed as Mythical. These items generally require a number of Raid objectives to be completed.

These classes of gear are also received from quests, not just from Treasure Chests.

All loot comes in the form of Treasure Chests and Corpse Loot. On top of the gear listed above, Treasure Chests also drop Skill books, used to upgrade skills, discussed below, as well as Vendor Trash, Quest Items and Rare Tradeskill Materials.

Corpse Loot include certain quest items and vendor trash.

NOTE: Greyed Out mobs will NOT drop treasure chests, but WILL drop Corpse Loot.

The other type of loot is Player Made. Without getting into great detail about Tradeskills, I'll summarize it to say that there are 2 tiers of Tradeskilled items - Handcrafted and Mastercrafted. Handcrafted are about the same tier as Treasured, Mastercrafted are about the same as Legendary.

Skills / Abilities / Spells
Each level, your character is awarded a new skill, or an upgrade to an existing skill, automatically. These newly acquired skills/upgrades start at the base level - Apprentice. In time, you will wish to increase the effectiveness of these skills by obtaining Skill Books. Below are listed the skill books, in order of quality, along with the loot rating (and thus where to find them):
Journeyman - Handcrafted - 20% bonus
Adept - Treasured - 40% bonus
Expert - Mastercrafted - 60% bonus
Master - Fabled - 80% bonus
Grandmaster - Chosen from a Class-Specific list of skills upon reaching certain level milestones - 100% bonus.

Upgrades to skills will cause the skill's primary effect to be increased by a certain amount, ranging from 20% to Double effectiveness. These percentages are educated guesses based on my experiences. This may not always be the case.

Mentoring
Ever wish you could group with your lower level friend without creating a new character or causing them to gain very little XP? Or revisit that old dungeon and your journey be meaningful? in EQ2 you can Mentor down to another player's level, such that your effective level, skills and gear will scale down as well. This will also cause you to receive Treasure Chests, Experience and Achievement Experience from Mobs which were previously Greyed Out. Mentoring a friend also causes them to recieve bonus XP, and you to recieve bonus Achievement XP.

You can now also mentor yourself down to any level that is a multiple of 5 using an certain NPC, costing a few gold.

While mentored, although your gear is scaled down, high level scaled down gear will act as or better then Fabled gear at the lower level.

EDIT** Added another post onto the first post, to consolidate thread purpose.

Quite a testimonial. ;)

EQ1 carries some fond memories for me including tri-hardware boxing a ranger, cleric, and enchanter. Might have to fire up EQ2 just to "see it".

How do you deal with the reaction chains? I played EQ2 when it first came out, but have no real recollection of it at all besides that people really liked the crafting.

Does the RAF work all the way to max level?

I used to play EQ (boxed) and loved it, recently ended my wow subs and feeling really bored.

sounds more entertaining than solo play. i gave it a shot once for about a week or so and found myself pretty bored. obviously i wasnt high enough to partake in everything it has to offer, but everything just didnt feel right and and i couldnt adjust. so i gave up.

If they ever release a Mac client I am all in!

I have a mixed Mac/PC hardware boxing environment so I only like to run games that have clients for both.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by heffner

How do you deal with the reaction chains? I played EQ2 when it first came out, but have no real recollection of it at all besides that people really liked the crafting.

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All I ever did was put the trigger in random places in my sequence. Over the course of mashing, you were fairly certain to nail it at some point. When EQ2 first came out, the Heroic Opportunity chain had almost no leeway {X spell HAD to be the next spell or the chain broke}. Now, however, it is a lot more lenient.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by stoat

Does the RAF work all the way to max level?

I used to play EQ (boxed) and loved it, recently ended my wow subs and feeling really bored.

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Yep, RAF works up to max level.

I've recently taken up EQ1 again but I debated long and hard between 1 and 2. My decision was to check eq1 out first and just see the changes they have made in the last 3 years, so far its been pretty fun. Once EQ1 gets old th ough I fully intend on moving onto eq2, most likely on nek with you guys. Thanks for the review, I already had a good feeling about EQ2 from all I have read, looks pretty solid honestly.

went down this road with EQ2 before including AOC, the game play for these 2 games is abit slow. wow is fast paced and very flexiable.

just a shame wow is getting old, maybe one day blizzard bring out wow 2 or something. but by then it will probably turn arcade and dumbed. bye bye hardcore

for now wow is my choice, hands down

bit off topic but, if i wanted something new and exciting i would look into the weird possibility of multiboxing first person shooters like cod etc.

i dont think itd be possible. unless youre running each instance on seperate hardware. and even then, depending on the type of match youre playing, when a player dies and respawns, itd be complicated to get your whole team back together.

EDIT** I've included all this in the first post**

As a follow up, some more gameplay information:

Mob Grouping
Mobs are by themselves or linked in Encounters. An Encounter is a set of 2 or more mobs that will autopull when 1 member of their encounter in pulled. Certain AE spells are Encounter Based, meaning they will only affect mobs of the targeted Encounter. Other AEs, called Blue AEs will affect all mobs in an area, whether or not they are part of the targeted Encounter.

Having said this, mobs of different encounters will still assist each other, meaning that if you are not careful, you could pull 2 or more entire Encounters.

Mob / Encounter Difficulty
Mobs of the same type can have a wide range of difficulty rating. The rating system uses Up and Down Arrows to determine this. This can be seen on the UI frame of the Mob. The system ranges from the weakest mob having 3 Down Arrows (vvv) to the middle range, having No Arrows, to the most difficult, having 3 Up Arrows (^^^).

Encounters are also rated based on a same-level player in difficulty using the words Weak, Average, Heroic, and Epic. Weak mobs are just annoyances, even for the solo player. Average are bested by the solo player. Heroic is meant for groups of 2-6 equal level players. Epic is meant for multiple same-level groups, the amount which is included after the word Epic (eg. Epic X2, Epic X4, etc). Encounters can be defeated by fewer players then recommended if the group(s) outlevel or outgear the Encounter. Heroic and higher Encounters offer bonus Encounter Experience once defeated, on top of the individual Mob Experience.

Mobs can be outleveled and Greyed Out. There is a formula for pre-20 mobs, but past mob-level 20, if your character level is more then 10 levels higher, the mob will be Greyed Out. Greyed Out mobs / Encounters will not provide Experience, and another importance, which leads us to loot...

Loot
Equipment is categorized in terms of quality by the following terms, in order of rarity:
No Term - No special term categorizing this gear. Basic trash gear. No or few stat bonuses. Found in Small Chests.
Treasured - Your basic gear with stat bonuses. Found in Treasured Chests or better.
Legendary - Much better then Treasured Gear. Stats are equivalent to Treasured Gear approx 5 levels higher. Found in Ornate Chests or better.
Fabled - The highest tier of gear normally available to a player. Equivalent to 10+ levels of Treasured Gear. Found in Exquisite Chests.
Mythical - Each of the unique class-specific weapons and a small handful of other pieces of gear (mostly given out as Limited Special Event Rewards) are classed as Mythical. These items generally require a number of Raid objectives to be completed.

These classes of gear are also received from quests, not just from Treasure Chests.

All loot comes in the form of Treasure Chests and Corpse Loot. On top of the gear listed above, Treasure Chests also drop Skill books, used to upgrade skills, discussed below, as well as Vendor Trash, Quest Items and Rare Tradeskill Materials.

Corpse Loot include certain quest items and vendor trash.

NOTE: Greyed Out mobs will NOT drop treasure chests, but WILL drop Corpse Loot.

The other type of loot is Player Made. Without getting into great detail about Tradeskills, I'll summarize it to say that there are 2 tiers of Tradeskilled items - Handcrafted and Mastercrafted. Handcrafted are about the same tier as Treasured, Mastercrafted are about the same as Legendary.

Skills / Abilities / Spells
Each level, your character is awarded a new skill, or an upgrade to an existing skill, automatically. These newly acquired skills/upgrades start at the base level - Apprentice. In time, you will wish to increase the effectiveness of these skills by obtaining Skill Books. Below are listed the skill books, in order of quality, along with the loot rating (and thus where to find them):
Journeyman - Handcrafted - 20% bonus
Adept - Treasured - 40% bonus
Expert - Mastercrafted - 60% bonus
Master - Fabled - 80% bonus
Grandmaster - Chosen from a Class-Specific list of skills upon reaching certain level milestones - 100% bonus.

Upgrades to skills will cause the skill's primary effect to be increased by a certain amount, ranging from 20% to Double effectiveness. These percentages are educated guesses based on my experiences. This may not always be the case.

Mentoring
Ever wish you could group with your lower level friend without creating a new character or causing them to gain very little XP? Or revisit that old dungeon and your journey be meaningful? in EQ2 you can Mentor down to another player's level, such that your effective level, skills and gear will scale down as well. This will also cause you to receive Treasure Chests, Experience and Achievement Experience from Mobs which were previously Greyed Out. Mentoring a friend also causes them to recieve bonus XP, and you to recieve bonus Achievement XP.

You can now also mentor yourself down to any level that is a multiple of 5 using an certain NPC, costing a few gold.

While mentored, although your gear is scaled down, high level scaled down gear will act as or better then Fabled gear at the lower level.

I played EQ2 about 2 (ish) years ago, as well as when it first launched (fond memories) Over time I realized it was ridiculous to solo, the game was setup for players to level and not grind (maybe I just didn't pay enough attention and crafted to much) I liked the game but I would wonder if it's come leaps and bounds from when it launched and 2 years ago. Any thoughts? WoW is not boring by any means to me yet but EQ 2 crafting was amazingly fun would like to go back.

If I could summarise EQ2 since launch:
Crafting has been dumbed down. There are no intermediate products to make before making the final product. There is no reliance on other tradeskill professions.

Harvesting has been dumbed down. When harvesting, you now have a chance for 1 of the following:
1 Harvest
3 Harvests
5 Harvests
1 Rare
10 Harvests + 1 Rare
1 Imbuing Material (dunno what else to call it, it is used to Imbue/Bless weapons and chest/leg armours)

Outdoor Shared Zones have been geared more towards the Solo Quester. They have removed the VAST majority of Heroic Encounters in the outdoor zones and changed almost all lower tier outdoor Epic Encounters (the ones requiring 2+ groups) to Heroic Encounters (although these encounters still drop a retarded amount of loot).

They've added Achievement Experience (Later renamed to Alternate Advancement Experience) to the game, which adds a really nice goal and reason to continue leveling. Not only do you gain levels in the usual fashion, but by killing named, completing quests and exploring, you gain AA levels (which matter as much, if not more then Adventure Levels).