EQ2 in a nutshell

March 24, 2006 on 10:28 am | In MMO (Live), EQ2

Back in January, I first starting hearing things about a major update coming to Everquest 2. Upon reading some details, I became intrigued. Ultimately, I purchased a discounted box at GameSpot, and re-upped my old account, specifically to play on the Test Server to see what all the hub bub was about. That was when they first posted Publish 19a to the server.

Two months later, I decided to move on. I personally needed something different, but I largely felt EQ2 was vastly improved because of Publish 19.

Here’s why.

The first, and most overt, change is the Class system. As outlined previously, the EQ2 team at SOE replaced the previous archetype/sub-class sytem (coincidentally coming to Age of Conan, which I think is going to be an issue) with a straight class-based one like World of Warcraft and Everquest 1 before it.

This is about where the similarities end though.

EQ2 was already a fairly content complete game. The team has spent the last fifteen months constantly adding new zones, new quests, two Adventure Packs and twoExpansions. I would say EQ2 has, during this time, probably received more content per active subscription account than any other MMORPG out there. Others have taken longer to release such goodies.

So when the new class system went in, it included a great deal of new content to add to what was already there. The result is much more than just a simple linear romp through levels with the occasional choice. Here, I outline why.

Skills

Each class, once chosen at level 19, started on a path of new skills and abilities that was already pretty impressive. Every new level grants at least one or two new skills or upgrades. Every four levels, a dialog is presented wherein the player chooses a base statistic they want to modify. Every ten levels, they choose an existing skill to upgrade to its maximum level (Master II). And that's just the automatically-presented choices.

Each skill can be upgraded from its default Apprentice I to a maximum of Master II, from Apprentice I, II, III, IV to Adept I, II, III to Master I, II (Apprentice IV is a fairly rare crafting combine, and because I’ve achieved it, I wonder if Adept IV is in the game too).

This, however, is not a straight skill progression. While each is better than the prior, players don't need to buy them in any order. In addition to being able to choose a skill to max out every ten levels (starting at level 14), a player can upgrade a skill from Apprentice I to Master I. Players do so by acquiring, as drops or from other players, skill scrolls.

Players can buy their first upgrade (Apprentice II) from a Class Trainer, but they're getting what they pay for: a very small upgrade for a very small amount of money. Most players will either choose to shop for an immediate upgrade to Adept I, hope someone in their guild gets a scroll or hope to get lucky with a drop. Or they may be a Sage and attempt to craft the tough Adept III.

As of Publish 19 though, now every combat class has a whole new slew of abilities to unlock, learn and upgrade. And the classes are pretty diverse, playing differently, feeling differently.  

Classes

The previous Character Advancement system required first a base class choice, and then a sub-choice. For example, someone who landed on the Isle of Refuge would choose to be a Mage, Fighter, Cleric or Scout. When they reached level 9, they would be presented, through quest, three different sub-class choices (ie, the Mage could choose Enchanter, Sorcerer or Summoner. Then when they reached level 19, they were again presented with a choice, this time between two options (ie, the Sorcerer could become a Wizard or Warlock). This was their final class choice, the role they wished to be forever more.

Unfortunately, this also meant that to experience variants on the theme, players had to progress through the same base class and first sub-class numerous times. This was, in a word, not that fun, and the foundation of my concern with the system proposed in Age of Conan.

For one, this entailed playing with the exact same abilities for either 9 or 19 levels. That progression does not happen overnight. For another though, the newbie content was just not that diverse. While each starting town within either Qeynos or Freeport was bracketed by a newbie adventure zone, the content in each zone quickly went from new to repeated.

So for players to experience new classes to play from level 20 and beyond, they had to repeat either some or a lot of the same content they had already seen.

No more.

Under the new system, the classes themselves are very diverse. Each does play differently, and the differences become apparent even by Level 2.

Further, the new newbie content progression has also been changed such that Good players start in Queens Colony while Evil ones start in Outpost of the Overload (both iterations on the old Isle of Refuge). This immediate separation comes with quests and stories unique to each place. And further, it is possible to leave this island almost immediately upon arrival.

Finally, advancement rates have been upgraded. I do not know how fast someone could level up in EQ2 now, but it is far faster than it was in beta.

As a result, rolling a new character to try out new abilities is now not only far less painful, but much more fulfilling. Experimentation has been brought to EQ2 for a lot more people.

(note: this does not apply to Artisans, who still make sub-class choices at 9 and 19).

Crafting

Crafting has also been changed. While the overhaul is not complete, the core goal (also as previously disclosed), was to remove the sub-combines system.

Until Pub 19, every item crafted not only required raw ingredients; it required a series of sub-combines to create new ingredients ultimately combined for the final product.

While nice in theory, the actual implementation annoyed many players. One's crafting skills, like gathering skills and combat skills, go up through use. This increase is two-fold: one part is the crafting skill itself and the other is Tradeskill XP, a separate XP track from Combat XP (and now, Alternate Advancement XP). Like Combat XP, increasing one's Tradeskill XP eventually allows them to "level up", which in turn lets them buy and learn new Recipes. Each Recipe one can craft is color-coded to indicate just how much XP and Skill increase they could expect upon the successful creation of something. For example, a Yellow-colored recipe was risky to attempt but paid out well in XP. White was optimal for both. Blue is lower still, and Gray, at the low end of the scale, did not reward any XP or Skill increase at all. And it was in the Gray scale that lied the problem.

The sub-combines required to craft higher-order items invariably Grayed-out rather quickly. The theory, of course, is that the higher level crafters would seek out lower level crafters and work out a business arrangement whereby the lower crafters could XP/Skill up by crafting the sub-combines that would still reward them, and then sell those sub-combines to the higher level player who could continue skill-upping by just making the final combines.

Unfortunately for the system, players didn't follow that rule. Rather, they did what was typical of MMORPGers everyone and strove for self-sufficiency. I often wonder why this surprised some.

Eventually, the EQ2 team saw this, and after what I'm sure was some hand-wringing, decided a change was needed, a change that would allow the players an easier time at what they were going to do anyway.

So the entire crafting system is being slowly changed such that every Recipe will require just a single combine at the moment of creation. Players will still need to gather the necessary resources, either by harvesting them from the land, looting them from mobs/NPCs or buying them from the Auction House. Further, the crafting system that was in place, the one that included reactive button mashing and proactive decision making, is still there to be used and enjoyed.

The result is the removal of what is largely considered busy work. The change is ongoing, but the EQ2 team wisely chose to focus first on the Scholar>Sage Artisan sub-choices first. With the influx of new skills with the new class system comes a need to upgrade them. With that need comes a need to get Skill Scrolls. So Scholars/Sages were equipped to deliver first.

Some veterans who already had maxxed out the system, and those who strongly believed such activities should be left to a relative minority of players, didn't like the changes. But it's better for the game at large because it lowers the barrier of entry to a compelling feature everyone should have a shot at trying.

Players are going to give up anyway. Crafting is nothing but a money sink unless you somehow turn a profit. And like all games with any sort of player-directed economy, the only real way to turn a profit is to craft something people want and then go through the motions of selling it.

That social end of commerce requires a lot of attention, a lot of dedication, and is ultimately what keeps such activities to a relatively small percentage of the playerbase. People only need to look as far as the easiest crafting system in the genre (WoW) to see that even lowering the bar to an almost non-existent level doesn't guarantee the entire playerbase will be crafting all the time.

Therefore, I'm all for making the crafting process more approachable. The economy will balance out anyway, because of the demands of commerce.

Content

Finally, a word on content.

Much of the robust system of content delivery within EQ2 already existed. Quests are around every corner. Almost every NPC has a story to tell, a lot have quests, but quests can also be received by clicking on placards, picking up items from chests, sometimes even just walking into a room. A few months back, the EQ2 team mentioned they had in excess of 2,000 quests in the game. I believe them.

There is the entire gamut of quests and rewards. Some are the usual Kill X to collect Y type stuff. Others though are:

• Access Quests. When done, these reward access to a special zone or area which could have even more quests, or just reward in good loot.
• Heritage Quests. These will start characters down a long path with a final result being a recognizable item from Everquest 1.
• Collection Quests. These are all about finding items throughout the world of Norrath. Most times these items are found by clicking on special glowing sprite-like lights on the ground in indoor and outdoor zones.
• Knowledge Quests. These involve collecting specific items from specific enemy Races, resulting in increased effectiveness when fighting them.
• City Tasks. These were fairly typical quests, but their rewards were more for Guild XP rather than just personal Combat XP.
• Far Seas Trading Company. These are categorized by the zone in which they are granted, as noted in the suffix code of the quest title (ie, #ANT0724 for Antonica). They are begun by reading a scroll one loots from a chest a mob or NPC drops. The story behind it, according to the NPCs, was that these were requests made of others who, well, obviously failed if a monster was found with the request in their belly. The quests are typical Kill/Collect quest, and require a fairly straightforward turn-in for money. But I still found it interesting that a quest about hunting mobs for a Trading Company was granted through such a method. Here’s a good list.
• Work Requests. These are granted by Artisan representative to aspiring Crafters who'd like to skill up and make money through quests.

All of these are linked to a highly interactive world. Both WoW and EQ2 seemed to be striving for such in this generation of MMORPGs, where so many plants, rocks, mineral deposits, sticks, and so on were interactive. In WoW, you needed skill to even notice such elements were interactive. In EQ2, you can interact with all of them, though are unable to actually gather anything from them unless the appropriate skill level has been achieved. But the result is the same: a world of things to click beyond just the next mob to kill.

Of course Pub 19 has brought much new content, as will future updates. The system for offering new content is based on a robust interactive world, a platform I imagine includes some relatively-easy-to-use content creation tools for content developers on the team. This was always one of their promises: a world that, unlike EQ1, was built for such scalability.

Conclusion

EQ2 was always a grand endeavor, with a lot of innovative features, things other games have, but to a lesser degree. Unfortunately, a lot of the coolness was locked behind an arduous learning curve, something that alienated the casual MMORPGs SOE had hoped to attract with it.

I can't blame them for thinking the way they did in early development when such decisions were made. The genre was different back then. It was smaller, for one; with limited appeal because of how much harder the games were to get into then. So if one was looking at the genre then, what they saw as needing improvement was fairly predictable.

Unfortunately, it also turned out to be somewhat wrong.

WoW changed a lot of people's impressions about what it truly takes to make a casual MMORPG. EQ2 was easier and more approachable than EQ1, but it was WoW that defined what level of ease was required to grow the genre. I have said before that without WoW (and to a lesser degree, Guild Wars), I do not think the genre would have doubled in popularity in 2005. Prior, many pundits assumed incremental growth was all that was possible. Without these new contenders with their different viewpoints, I'd agree.

Nowadays, things are different. WoW brought a lot of people into the genre, but it also pulled a lot of people from other MMORPGs. How many people were pulled is almost impossible to measure, but that's not the point. The point is that WoW, with a game that was not entirely unlike EQ1 except for its lowering of the barriers for entry and play, succeeded in doing the two things SOE hoped EQ2 would do: pull in new players, and give existing genre veterans something new to the enjoy.

EQ2 succeeded too, after a fashion, but probably far below expectations. As such, Publish 19 was conceived and delivered in a bid to change that.

Will this result in EQ2 giving WoW a run for its money? Probably not. WoW is a force of nature now, at a level almost nobody can compete with. They've got a global reach I don't think any other MMORPG publisher can touch. They've also got money far beyond what others probably have. And finally, they have already achieved massive success. They'll continue to grow for a bit, eventually plateau, and then shrink of course. But in their wake will have been started a new process by which MMORPGs are considered.

But EQ2 is also different enough from WoW to appeal to a different player. As big as WoW is, there’s always room for other titles in this genre, because the number of people interested in playing a massively-multiplayer online experience exceeds the ones who want to play a fantasy-themed massively-multiplayer online role-playing one.

Others may want to echo WoW's success with a similar formula, but that'll require even more money and more reach. Unless Big Oil or GE starting making games, I'm really not sure who can possibly trump WoW at a Diku-inspired EQ1-like game.

So what remains is a strive for uniqueness, hopefully through innovation.

This is the future for EQ2 in my opinion, a game already fairly different for anyone who has played both to any fair degree, and now has gotten even to get into and experience.