EQ2 Live Update 19 Thoughts

For weeks, I have been eagerly anticipating Live Update 19 for Everquest2. The level of changes in this free patch are significant, and from what I've experienced on the Test Server since the middle of January, all of the changes are for the better.

Last night, the patch went live.

No reason to copy/paste the entire patch notes. If you're interested or playing EQ2, chances are you know about them. If you're not playing, most of the changes won't mean much to you. For those interested though, here's the real short form:

• New Character Progression- The biggest change, and the foundation of my excitement for EQ2, is that now players choose their character class at character creation (rather than having to wait until level 20). The scope of what has been changed is significant. All classes now start gaining their class specific abilities, and can even begin to see by level 6 or 7, just what their class is about. Better still, level 6 or 7 is an hour or so of work, faster with each reroll. Class experimentation has finally come to EQ2!
• New Newbie Zones- No longer do both Evil and Good characters start in the same zone. Evil goes to 'Outpost of the Overlord' and Good go to 'Queens Colony'. The geography is the same, but the quests, NPCs, and general tones are very different.
• No more Boat Tutorial- On the downside, the boat tutorial has been removed for technical reasons. I do so wish they positioned that removal differently though. A year later, the world is populated enough that new characters enter a thriving NPC and player market already. They're no longer castaways.
• Intro- This isn't new I guess, but it is new to me: The intro cinematric (just some sketches of book pages) tells a compelling story. It's fairly longish and wordy, but it sets the stage nicely. Oddly though, it implies players have a choice between Good and Evil, yet isn't presented until players have already made that choice. The decision tree for new characters looks like this:
1. Choose race- Some races can only be Good or Evil while others can be both. There's a battery of new race-specific quests one can start once they've landed in their host city (after they leave their respective Newbie Isle).
2. Choose alignment- Irrelevant for those who chose a Race that could only be one, but the decision here drives the next selection, and ultimately upon which island the player lands.
3. Choose class- There are 16 classes to choose from, but each side has 8 that are unique to them (ie, Necromancers are Evil while Conjurors are good).
4. Choose appearance- Basically the same as ever, except, and newish to me, the "Alternate Character Models" can have their appearances adjusted as well. These models are the previously-integrated SOGA models. In general, I prefer this more stylized approach than the default models that launched with the game.
5. Choose name and server.
6. Watch intro cinematic.
7. So as you can see, the Intro is implying a choice that not only was made earlier, but drives too much to have those choices changed. I would recommend they move the Intro to display just prior to the Character Selection Screen (which comes right after the EQ2 logo).
• No more Citizenship Quest- I actually liked these, but it makes sense that they were removed. Since the choice of one's city is made when an alignment is chosen during Creation, players were already going to become citizens of that city anyway. There just was never a way for someone to change their mind until late into their teen levels (when they can do the Betrayal quest series, which will be getting a revamp down the road), so there was no reason to make players go through this quest just to confirm what was already preordained.
• Crafting Changes- While I never got much into Crafting, there were also significant changes to the Crafting process. Eldaec over at F13 provided this brief description: "Essentially, there will be no subcombines, recipes use all the resources that the subcombines would have done before, some other recipes changed". UD_Delt in that same thread also provided this link, which captures all developer comments and dissects them for relevance. Most of this means nothing to me except to further signify the scope of change in this patch.
• New Content- The usual battery of new and fixed content. It is odd for me to be excited by EQ2. I was fairly certain I'd never again play it once I made the choice to go with WoW instead. I knew I'd quit WoW someday of course (it happens). I just didn't think EQ2 was all that fun for how I like to play.

Basically, I underestimated SOE's ability to respond to challenges. But that's for another topic.