EQ2bros, we are so b-ACK! - "Vanilla" EverQuest 2 server comes out on Nigger Freedom Day

[bile demon]

inb4 this thread sinks like a rock because no one cares about this boomer MMO

https://www.everquest2.com/news/eq2-origins-server-beta-2024

The Daybreak kikes or whoever is in charge of the rotting corpse of the game right now found a mid-KoS (2006) build on some ancient computer and are launching a vanilla server with it -"Origins" server Anasthi Sul. It should be slightly less terrible than the previous TLEs, which weren't really anything other than the modern monstrosity the game has become over the years, just with post-50 content cut out. Maybe they'll even tone down the paypig milking a little bit...

I have fond memories of EQ2 despite the game being objectively terrible in many aspects, mostly due to it being my first MMO, so I'll probably give this a tentative try later this week. The mechanics and spirit of the game should be pretty close to what it was at launch back in 2004 unless they somehow manage to fuck it up, which means the game won't be solo-friendly at all and grouping will be necessary for any kind of meaningful progression. Hopefully the game will be mostly zoomerfrei due to not being anywhere near as popular as WoW back then and even more so nowadays, so the community should be pretty chill, friendly and boomer- and bored housewife-heavy.

Also, by far the best thing about EQ2 - some of the greatest video game music I've ever heard:

 

[TheOtherSideofMakeBelieve]

I don't have any interest in EQ2 but I have enjoyed my time in WoW classic despite the people working on it fucking things up quite a bit and the community being far too progression/min-max focused. Hopefully you'll get an experience at least that good

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

Saw this in my notifications, didn't realize it was in the Gaming section, then wondered why someone would make a KF thread because Mercedes-Benz came out with a new EQ model (which the thread name implied)

 

[$5.3 Million Dollars]

https://www.everquest2.com/news/eq2-pride-month-2024

My initial interest and hope was snuffed as soon as I bothered to check the other articles on the news feed. June strikes yet again.

 

[Scarthew]

obligatory

 

[Fag Albert]

so the community should be pretty chill, friendly and boomer- and bored housewife-heavy.

Hopefully it'll be good. If it's anything like what's left of the EQ 1 community it's going to be some of the most rancid spergs that still think it's 2004

 

[bile demon]

https://www.everquest2.com/news/eq2-pride-month-2024

View attachment 6094512
My initial interest and hope was snuffed as soon as I bothered to check the other articles on the news feed. June strikes yet again.

I have no idea how bad it is nowadays, but when I briefly came back to check out the game several years ago, there was some Russian guild causing massive amounts of seethe by having "no blacks, gays and Americans" in their recruitment ad posted in a public chat channel, and the in-game jannies just didn't care. I think they are running this on an absolute skeleton crew that only cares about milking the paypigs instead of being bloated with true believer troons like Blizzard.

Hopefully it'll be good. If it's anything like what's left of the EQ 1 community it's going to be some of the most rancid spergs that still think it's 2004

When I tried some of the previous TLEs, the community was one of the very few positive aspects of the game. The median age must be like forty. Granted, I never did any raids and I assume that's where the 'tism is concentrated since in vanilla, tons of raids are still contested rather than instanced.

 

[Gravityqueen4life]

Was too young to experience EQ2 and that's saying something, since im considered pretty old now days.

 

[James done did it]

EQ2's main redeeming features were an amazing OST and environments which was lost with subsequent xpacs and they even got rid of some of the good tracks like the original qeynos and freeport songs. Also a lot of class diversity compared to WoW. The core game was good but itemization was terrible. The best gear aside from a very weak smattering of FABLED gear from metal chests was almost always legendary crafted. At launch there were no legendary drops, just quest rewards, most of which were useless. No incentive to do dungeon runs beyond grinding XP since the drops would usually be worse than generic crafted stuff. The exceptions like that one black and purple quest robe were so central to everyone's build that there were week long lines sitting and camping the spawn point for the quest starter item.

There just wasn't a lot of thought put into gearing up your character at launch. Launch did have good raid content and some great dungeons though. Lavastorm, Everfrost and the Feerott were some of my favorite areas to explore in any game ever, very well designed and far better than anything that came after them.

I would say the best version of that game would be KoS but without the KoS zones and level cap bump ironically. They made a lot of improvements to the old zones. But they destroyed the core game experience by getting rid of a lot of the charming stuff like the archetype-class-subclass setup, the isle of refuge, etc.

 

[HTTP Error 404]

I still remember the EQ2 launch lead up. Every time Asheron's Call 2 would announce some feature or discuss something they were doing, EQ2 would have a new blog post talking about how they were totally doing the same thing. It was amazing to watch.

 

[bile demon]

The exceptions like that one black and purple quest robe

Robe of the Invoker, one of the very, very few items with mana regen back then. The only others I can think of were prismatics and the efreeti boots. I spent so many hours killing the little purple niggers on the beach in Feerrott who had a chance to drop the quest starter because the spawn point for the other quest starter under the tree was always camped.

great dungeons

Dungeon crawling was where EQ2 really excelled. Sol's Eye, OoLS, Nek castle, etc... were massive and had such a great atmosphere. Back when you still left your spirit behind on death it was genuinely scary to die somewhere deep and far away. OoLS especially since you needed access quests for both the inside and the lowest level and if whoever had those left after a wipe, the rest of the group was fucked.

archetype-class-subclass setup, the isle of refuge, etc.

From what I've read about this server, you start as your final class already and IoR is split into queen's colony and outpost of the overlord, but at least racial segregation is back with the city suburbs being reintroduced.

One of the things that needed fixing the most in my opinion, but never actually got fixed or even improved at least a little, was how incredibly spammy the combat was. I remember by level 50 I had like 4 hotbars full of buttons, around 10 - 15 of which were part of a regular "rotation" and used pretty much every single fight, and the issue only got worse with more levels and skills. They really fucked that up big time, the amount of skills could have easily been cut to like 1/5 without any loss of depth and complexity of the combat.

 

[James done did it]

From what I've read about this server, you start as your final class already and IoR is split into queen's colony and outpost of the overlord, but at least racial segregation is back with the city suburbs being reintroduced.

One of the things that needed fixing the most in my opinion, but never actually got fixed or even improved at least a little, was how incredibly spammy the combat was. I remember by level 50 I had like 4 hotbars full of buttons, around 10 - 15 of which were part of a regular "rotation" and used pretty much every single fight, and the issue only got worse with more levels and skills. They really fucked that up big time, the amount of skills could have easily been cut to like 1/5 without any loss of depth and complexity of the combat.

yeah this sounds like mid KOS, the isle of refuge changes were part of that expansion iirc. The removal of the subclass quests is sad but that also happened either during KOS or maybe with the release of Faydwer.

The spam issue depended on your class. melee DPS was spammier than spells back in the launch days because mana regen options were very poor. It was manastone, efreeti boots, ROI and the prismatic weapons, and frankly very few guilds were good enough to get prismatic weapons in launch era. Also those heroic opportunities that people stopped bothering with at some point, they were actually relevant in the early days. I played Brigand and in theory most of the options had niche but yeah, in most fights you were just spamming for damage and timing so you got an autoattack in between combat arts.

They did sort of fix that later on, some arts got condensed when I went back and played again I think when the Odus/Erudin expansion came out mostly just to try out Kunark. But sadly Kunark suffered from post KOS area design issues. I liked some of the KOS changes but ultimately it was that expansion that killed my love of the game, Faydwer doubled down on everything.