EQ2 - The Shadow Odyssey expansion thoughts

I've been keeping abreast of developments in the EQ2 world recently, though I do think the devs have somewhat lost the plot since the days when I started playing. I played between the release of two expansions, the first one bringing back one of the best-loved continents of original EQ1 and raising the level cap to 70, and providing a full levelling experience right from level 1 to level 70 on just that continent. The second one brought back probably the best loved continent from EQ1, raising the level cap from 70-80 and adding a HUGE amount of new content. In the meantime, the devs had added a new raid zone and a brand spanking new starting city and starting zone, which I thought was fantastic.

Recently, they've not added a great deal in the way of new or seriously revamped zones - and those are the lifeblood of an MMO. Adding new tradeskill recipes and balancing classes is vital too, but new content is THE single most important thing to an MMORPG. Recently, a proposed skeletal revamp that would allow new weapons and armour graphics to be created much faster (and therefore have modellers make each one higher quality) has fallen through, and no attempt has been made to revamp the old zones of EQ2 that are extremely dated and offer a poor gaming experience.

I could understand that if a new expansion was on the way, one that would offer a whole new path to level 80-90 on a wonderful new continent, but sadly that appears not to be the case. I was holding out high hopes for a combined return of the final two continents from the golden age of EQ2, Odus and Velious. Odus was a continent available in the original EQ1 on release, the starting zone of the Erudites, a race already in EQ2. It's certainly conceivable that Odus could be remade to offer a levelling experience from 1-70/80, while Velious could be added for higher level players from 80-90. For those of you unfamiliar with EQ1, Velious was the second expansion to EQ1 that provided content for levels 35+ when the level cap was 50, and it was awesome. Given the massive success of the returns of Faydwer and Kunark in the last two expansions, I'm disappointed that SOE did not continue along the same path. EQ2 hasn't got many years left in it, I'd have thought, so it's a shame that they haven't fully tapped the rich vein of history while EQ2 is still in its heyday.

Oh well, it's something I'll have to get over. It seems EQ1 veterans only make up a smallish proportion of the EQ2 population, so keeping us happy probably isn't the top priority. So I'll move onto the meat of the expansion, the content. In a nutshell, it offers no raise in level cap but a raise in the number of AA points that can be earned (like talent points in WoW) and some new trees to go with them, a new overland zone and a bunch of dungeons - many of them favourites from EQ1. Oh, and there's some new quests and the chance to earn 'shards' from running the dungeons, which can be traded in for high-level gear - making epic equipment grindable for non-raiders for the first time in EQ2.

That's it, though, and I find myself feeling fairly underwhelmed by it all when compared to the last two expansions. Sure, in terms of raw zone increase, the new expansion will have 20 and that's probably close to what Faydwer offered, but only one is an overland zone and so the world's not going to feel much bigger. The addition of new dungeons is going to be cool, but unfortunately it completely invalidates all the existing max-level dungeons, so the net gain of playable zones isn't really going to be that much. The new quests and AA trees are another bonus, but then the previous expansions had the former in spades and offered similar AA gains through raising the level cap.

Additionally, the choice to let players grind endgame gear is a bad one, I think. I'm all for giving the non-raiders more to do, but I don't think they should be rewarded with the very best gear for the simple reason that it just turns the endgame into a grind, after which there's literally nothing more to do. I remember the virtually compulsory faction grind in Alterac Valley in pre-BC WoW once you hit level 60, so you could get your epic ring, mount and weapon. I understand that a lot of players don't have the time to raid any more - I'm one of them - but I still think raiding has its place in MMORPGS, as they're the ultimate incarnation of teamwork and essentially teamwork is what an MMORPG is about. But I still understand non-raiders' concerns that they'll never be able to compete with raiders due to the gear advantage the latter have, for instance in PvP, but giving the non-raiders access to the same gear seems to wrong solution to me. I'd simply make raid gear unusuable in PvP, preserving the advantage of having it but still allowing the non-raiders to hold their own if it comes to a confrontation.

Okay, that aside, let's look at the zones. Innothule Swamp is the overland zone, in EQ1 the home of the trolls and an all-round cool zone that sat pretty close to the Feerott. I think the devs have missed a chance to introduce a new starting city by bringing Grobb back, but that's probably just me. Anyway, presumably Innothule will act as a hub for all the new dungeons, which include such familiar faces as Guk, Najena, Mistmoore and Befallen. Several of those names are very well-known among EQ1 players, but it just doesn't strike me as enough. I know the original EQ had the Lost Dungeons of Norrath expansion, which in principle was very much like this one (sadly though I never played it) in the way it had a lot of dungeons and allowed the player to complete missions to earn high level gear, but the one thing that EQ1 had over the current iteration of EQ2 is that the gameworld at that point was MASSIVE. After only one expansion, EQ1 had some 80 full zones (and none of them instanced copies of other zones). LDoN was the 6th expansion of EQ1, so as you can imagine the gameworld was absolutely huge by then.

Really, I genuinely think the Shadow Odyssey sounds like a great idea for an endgame. But EQ2's not complete enough to warrant it yet. The game's just not big enough, and the progression is currently all shot to hell. The LDoN-style expansion is like a cherry on top of an ice-cream - it's a fantastic final touch, but it just looks silly if you put it on a half-finished ice cream. To me, the Shadow Odyssey is a step backwards from previous expansions. They've been getting steadily bigger and better up until now, but the proposed Shadow Odyssey plans just seem like a half-hearted attempt to make an expansion by bolting together a bunch of new zones (and not even outdooor zones) without bothering to connect them up properly and make them into a cohesive unit. Much like the original EQ2, in fact.

To me, the Shadow Odyssey seems like it should be released as one of the now-defunct Adventure Packs, rather than an expansion in its own right. And I'm disappointed that it's the best that SOE have to offer for this year's expansion, frankly. Not really doing a very good job of enticing me back.

Why I quit Age of Conan

I've not updated the blog in a while now, and there's three main reasons for that. Firstly, my computer's graphics card is having a tantrum and is making it extremely difficult for me to perform such complex tasks as switching my PC on. Thankfully, I'm abroad at the moment on another PC that happens to function perfectly, but while this sounds good it actually only makes matters worse because the internet connection I have out here in South Africa doesn't allow me to game. The third reason why I've not updated the site is because I cancelled my Age of Conan subscription after a month.

You readers will be far more interested in the last of these reasons. Some of you will be puzzled, because I actually sounded quite positive when I was writing the first couple of entries of my Age of Conan blog - and I was feeling positive when I wrote them. Trouble was, as soon as I got off the newbie island (Tortage), the realities of the game hit me hard. So, a quick run down on why I quit AoC, at least in the short term.

1) The game is essentially unplayable in the main world with my machine. It sort of held up on the newbie island, but the more crowded full game world was much harder on it - particularly the cities. If I got 2 frames a second in the cities I considered myself lucky. The answer, of course, was a new graphics card - but I can't really afford one right now and it's rather annoying to have to buy one to play a MMO when I can run Crysis on medium settings with the one I've already got. Of course, this is a double edged sword - it means in three years time, AoC will be able to run perfectly well on most computers and it'll still look great, but right now it's just too demanding.

2) The gameworld is dull. True, I've only seen two of the starting cities and I've not gone to the Cimmeran starting city that sounds pretty cool and snowy and all (I was a big fan of Halas in EQ1), but the ones I saw were tedious and badly designed. The home city of the Aquilonians is very classically-inspired, but the problem is that it's not all stunning marble and the like, it's just white stone. I'm aware that the designers were trying to create a realistic city, but it just ends up boring instead of impressive. I feel they've hemmed themselves in creatively with the 'realistic' setting, even though they didn't need to. You can have beautiful cities that would never exist in real life and still maintain an aspect of realism, you just need to leave out flying houses and elves and stuff.

Worse, the actual zones are equally tedious. Lots of open plains and grassland and stuff, and it looks pretty realistic - but that absence of creativity strips the zones of the character they had in other MMOs. Darkshire in WoW or Darklight Woods in EQ2 were very stylised zones, but they were awesome for it because of the very distinct visual style. I'm not saying AoC can't do it - Tortage was beautiful because it was full of so many bright colours and spectacular scenery, but the full gameworld doesn't seem to deliver.

3) The game design is boring. The quest design is awful, much like in EQ2's poorest zones and measurably worse than anything that was in the pre-Burning Crusade WoW (I couldn't comment on what came in BC, as I quit well before it arrived). The quests are literally just "go to x, kill y" or, worse, just "go talk to x, then come back". But the zone designers have committed a cardinal sin in not really having quest hubs, just having quest givers and quest targets scattered all over the zone. Some of the "talk to x, come back" quests have NPCs who are several zones apart, for pete's sake. I can understand if it was an epic quest of some kind, but they're not. It just seems the quest writers were entirely devoid of inspiration when they plied their trade on AoC. Couple this with boring zones and the fact that literally everyone you meet may well attack you on sight, you haven't really got compelling game play.

Oh, and most of the world is blocked off from you until you reach a certain level, which is a truly TERRIBLE idea. I want to go exploring the world. I loved it in EQ1, and I'd spend hours exploring high level zones with low-level characters. WoW I'd try and scout out the high level zones with my stealthed rogue, and I loved it. You won't let me explore the world, I'll take my money elsewhere. Worse, too, most of the zones are linked via instant travel reached by talking to an NPC. Personally, I can't think of anything worse - it's like the griffon rides in WoW, except you don't have to walk there first and you don't get to see the world unfold below you as you travel. It all conspires to make it feel like AoC has a tiny world, even though it patently doesn't. But when you travel from one place to another instantly and can't visit most of the zones anyway, you get bored very quickly.

4) The combat is repetitive. Sure, it looks better than in most MMOs, but that's only due to the quality of the animation of the player characters. The actual combat system is average, from what I've seen of it. I'm not saying that the standard MMO combat model is particularly good, either, but I've found it actually provides a more varied combat experience. AoC combat is literally just me firing off my most powerful combo, which will one-shot most player characters and also most monsters too. If it doesn't, I just do it a second time.

In EQ2 my Shadowknight had two full hotbars of combat skills, and my rogue in WoW could alternate pretty well between flat-out DPSing or stunlock/backstabbing, but more importantly both had methods of crowd control. AoC probably has one-on-one combat on par with other MMORPGs, but fighting multiple enemies feels more uncontrolled and frankly less skilled. I could be fighting two enemies with my WoW rogue and I'd be DPSing one while keeping the other stunned with all my stun skills, for instance. Combat with multiple characters in AoC just seems to go down to killing them one at a time, as fast as possible (perhaps adding some extra damage to the group with AOE skills).

5) No grouping. I haven't done a dungeon in AoC yet, which is probably due to my low level, but might also have something to do with the fact that I either kill or hide from any other player I see in the world, and they do the same thing. However, I don't think the dungeons start till about level 35, which is somewhat above my level. Anyway, I mention this in combination with the combat system. I just don't think AoC's combat system will lend itself to group dungeon crawling as well as standard WoW-esque combat does. Just a hypothesis, but it's enough to put me off playing.


So, that's why I parted ways with AoC. I might consider coming back at some point in the future, but certainly only if I have a new graphics card. There was just something about the game that was slightly lifeless and devoid of character, and I'm sorry to say it didn't grab me in the same way that most MMOs generally do. I can't quite put my finger on it precisely, despite having listed the above reasons, and I've read the same from other bloggers. Shame, really.

As far as what happens next for this blog, I may consider picking up EQ2 again. I played all the way up to level 65 when I could go back to Kunark, and then I quit because more important things took over my life. It seems somewhat of a waste to leave it there. But the problem with all that is that I'm starting a full-time job in a week, and there's a new expansion pack coming out soon called the Shadow Odyssey, which means Kunark will be empty when that arrives. Also, my enthusiasm with EQ2 has dropped somewhat due to the fact the devs appear to have stalled somewhat, and refuse to address the important issues affecting the early-to-mid game where a lot of the zones date back to release EQ2 and are therefore unbelievably poor. I'll keep posting, though. Expect a post on the Shadow Odyssey and my updated views on EQ2 to come up soon. After that, I might broaden this blog out to all online gaming, or I might look at some more of the upcoming games.