Everquest 2 in 2023 | New Player, First Impressions

Everquest 2, the 20 year old MMORPG that is the sequel to one of the Genre's most influential games of all time, Everquest. Produced by Sony online Entertainment later rebranded to Daykbreak games, what did they do right with Everquest 2, and also what went so wrong? How does the game hold up in 2023?
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[@Marauding_Llama]

The newbie boat ride and newbie island will always be a fond memory for me.

[@shmikal3464]

you missed out on the level 20 armor questline by doing the agnostic dungeon :0 the questline is very cool, always made getting out of the starting zone and into your first major city exciting

[@thefreshestdoug]

My man Waydot be swooshing through these MMO's bringing back all the hot takes

[@legendz411]

Really like this content. GG

[@noname-xt2io]

brings back memories..i ended up going over to WOW because my friends played there. but i was a die hard EQ guy. it got overwhelming though...and WOW is starting to be the same way. so much stuff to do that you get paralysis

[@Robertscorner1]

I played around 2006/2007 and I am pretty sure it took about a year of play to get up to level 50. Leveling was meant to be slow and it was common for players to level lock a character to complete more quests and gain AA points. Leveling too fast was seen as a bad thing. Mercenaries did not exist and soloing a dungeon was not usually possible. So you had to either join a guild or risk making a party with strangers. Apparently, mercenaries were added in 2011 when EQ2 became free to play. And yes we had guides in the form of the EQ2 forums. Talking about older mmo skills, some skill were meant to replace older skill, but beyond that most players used the in game macros.

[@danielhudy8560]

Awesome video i actually never played everquest 2! Definitely has that nostalgia vibes. Wish prog servers had a trial period. Don't feel like paying membership to give it a shot. Also I would love to see you try Warhammer Age of Reckoning (technically Return of Reckoning now)

[@elbuenomalo]

you can try eq2 you dont have to pay sub. for running heroics in high end level you should have membership but till then u know if u like it or now it is a very deep game and you need to have fun seeing you toon growing up becoming more powerful etc

[@georgen5882]

I played warhammer online when it hit. That game had a lot of good ideas with the public events etc. It really could have been better, but there were just so many options at the time. I played with a friend and we had a blast while we played. Unfortunately suffered from lack of population even shortly after launch. I liked it, though.

[@WinXP_SP1]

In Guild Wars 1 you could have bot allies in your group to do missions or for exploring.

[@shaun7723]

I heard the devs optimized the game around single core CPUs not realizing multi core CPUs were the future. I remember high end computers struggling to play this game at launch. 13:45

[@newspin2477]

that's my understanding as well

[@aceoyame2619]

Yep that was it. A lot of games did that. Intel had a roadmap back in the day that predicted 8 ghz+ single core CPUs so, that’s what devs optimized for

[@Letsbrewthis]

Many of your gripes with the leveling experience are just modern MMO design. They want you to get to the endgame quickly so you can play with the rest of the player base. World of Warcraft created the endgame rush mentality, every other game just tries to do the same. Really the only way to avoid this is to play one of the many horizontal progression MMOs

[@mikeythebold8299]

Loved EQ2. Graphics if you had a good pc unrivaled at the time. Still stands up to newer mmos. Loved the crafting, and they made questioning more linear... Instead of just guessing what you should be doing.

[@masiczobe6074]

Well done

[@komradeklutch6215]

EQ2 was and always has been extremely CPU intensive. A lot of the graphics require a CPU that isn't under complete task, so if you're running EQ2 and other programs behind it like a recording software, Google Chrome, Discord, steam, etc. It's going to bog down... Especially if you're running an older Gen i7 or lower

[@Postmann88]

Alright I first want to say that this was a great video and well put together, and I enjoyed it a lot. That said, it cracked me up when your criticisms of their monetization pop up method was interrupted by a KZbin commercial. While I agree with you completely that it’s not a good method, the irony was just too funny not to share. Keep making great content and I will continue to close your pop ups too my internet friend! 👍🏼

[@Amizori]

FYI in the launcher incase you didn’t know give an option to download the full game and much quicker

[@NJtrailflow]

I probably come back to EQ2 once a year because I get bored of other games and EQ2 is always there to just have fun with and fill a void. If the population was still booming it would be an awesome game to stick with for quite some time. And thank you for the agnostic dungeon thing so had no idea about that it’s taken me years to get to 60 for on and off playing

[@replicantmonk4310]

I was there on November 8th 2004...

[@thefifthaceassociation]

I played this game for like 9 years back when it was big. Big part of the game is the population and community it had. Thats what you are missing out on. Some of the dungeons that would take dozens of players. Lorbros here, Hello Nagafen.

[@hohenzollern6025]

This game puts almost no pressure on your GPU, it's almost all on the CPU. Made in the era of single core CPUs it was expecting the GHZ of a single core to get better, and planned for that. But then multicore happened, and GHZ stopped improving, and actually declined. A 3 GHZ dual core will outperform a 6 core running at 2.3 GHZ in EQ2. By a wide margin. They took a shot in the dark, to get the then GREAT grafics, and missed. Many people still play these games because they dont require new rigs to run. You can put together a top notch EQ2 computer for couch change. The one I used was in fact, free. Somebody else's outdated "junk". Newb areas will be pretty barren, but once you get to endgame there will be plenty of groups and raid guilds to play with. I gave up on EQ2 only because the direction it was going on class balance. They ruined certain classes because they could do their job too good, even though they couldnt do the job of other classes at all. For example... Berserker was designed around tanking large numbers of weak mobs. In that they were incredible, dare say, overpowered, but a single HARD mob could rek ya. So against that single hard mob, ya'd be better off with a Guardian. Day Break saw fit to make my beloved Zerk unable to do either well. So back to EQ I went. Much larger player base in the original as well, funnily enough.

[@noahmeeker3111]

Started playing during the tail end of EoF and stayed around until Shadow Odessey, started playing again a year ago and I'm glad that i came back but should have sooner! Adder from Maj'Dul! (=

[@hohenzollern6025]

Ouch, you quit at TSO? Man that was definitely the beginning of EQ2's golden age. TSO, SF, then the peak at Velious, one of the best times in MMO history. During Velious you'd have a dozen instances of the overland zones for the Public Quests... sooooo many people!

[@jcondo82]

The game was great, the issue with not taking off like WoW was more about accessibility. The system requirements at the time were insane.

[@newspin2477]

With the combat... I don't intend to be "that guy" however, from what I recall the assassin is particularly dependent on positionals and/or being in stealth. from what I recall, cheap shot is the main stun that you can use and then you can go into stealth or run behind or whatever you need to do to meet the positional requirements to do good damage with that class. I remember it as being a little on the weak side when it comes to soloing. Oh man, that dungeon... cavern of the afflicted, that came out when I was actively playing the game... it was a really good dungeon. EQ2 had a lot of potential, but I think the spammy nature of the combat and the poor optimization meant it was never really going to be able to compete with WoW. The spammy nature wasn't inherently bad, but the servers couldn't consistently handle the data... there would be massive fluctutions in my dps on raid night based on the server lag the day, time, dungeon etc. I was playing.

[@Caliban_80]

It's not that you're trash at all. Assassin just happens to be maybe the most dependent on ability rotation out of all the classes. It's one of the most challenging classes to master.

[@naDalous]

For how old this game is, it looks great!

[@hungnguyen-hf5yx]

you missed out one thing I found missing in the modern mmo too, and hope you will like it. With modern pc you can easily run eq2 with 3 characters at the same time in window mode. Each can have a mercenary too. So easy a 6 character group. Since you are running window mode you can click all spells/abilities with no issue for all characters....... took some time to get the routine but basically later in the game I just feel Like I needed 3-5 spells to keep track on for each player which is pretty easy and the merc they handles them selfes. So you can probably run heroic dungeons with some hassle but you will make it, with the help of the 3 merc. Have fun.

[@skudlugs]

try a real grp

[@elgido3207]

I spent a good 4 years playing this solidly. Sad to see so few players now. It really was bustling from 2004 to 2008 or so

[@PotatoeJoe69]

Loved this game so much.

[@Dra6nheart]

The skeleton laugh is the skeleton laugh from EQ1.

[@MoonsideResident]

24:00 Did they change it where you can't fight on a mount anymore? Back when I played, I never dismounted when fighting. That was an option you had to enable and I never did. It looked really janky playing a melee character on a mount but they let you do it (at least back when I played).

[@Scott-sm1bs]

I remember this. I believe this was the time when there were advanced classes

[@foxilator4778]

I haven't played since 2012, but if I remember correctly, there's a setting. You can hide mount altogether, hide in combat, or never hide.

[@99LitOs]

I never played this. Would this be worth checking out? A couple of years ago i had a blast starting and catching up to Lotro.

[@rs.sweden]

Yea try it. I have played it back and forth for 20 years, i always come back to eq2. Come to Varsoon server and I hook you up to a good start.

[@andrewaugustine1494]

Does anybody know which pve TLE server is most popular right now? And what xpac are they on? Thanks.

[@Shauma_llama]

I played EQ2 , and wished I could've experienced it as it was meant to be experienced. 🙂

[@Blackwater558]

I agree with what you say about the graphics. The only thing that really bothers me are the missing shadows. They don't have to be high quality, a dark blob underneath the character would suffice for me, but even that is missing. That alone is very off-putting to me :( EDIT It seems in later areas shadows are actually present. Or maybe Waydot just had them deactivated at first and activated them later. It's interesting what an impact in immersion shadows have, at least for me :D

[@shimapanzer9930]

just a heads up, which you probably already know, but it defaulted you to low settings. The game looks significantly better visually than what the defaults showed

[@baarthoos9799]

You didn't fully use the potential of the tutorial on the Queen's Colony island, I boarded the ship to Qeynos when I was level 11 and had quite nice equipment, not to mention the great tasks that you probably missed. Everquest 2 is like a paper RPG session, there is no need to rush, and the game does not forgive mindless clicking and skipping the information we obtain. The plot of the assigned tasks and the development of threads are really well done, and the endings are often brilliant and surprising. I first played WoW for many years, but comparing both games, WoW is a primitive and simple game where from the very beginning you are created as the savior of the world, in EQ2 the player is just another adventurer, a "dust in the wind" who is often asked to help, but he can simply refuse and go to a tavern to get drunk. 🤔😉😏👋

[@skudlugs]

New TLE server starting soon, good time to try it out.

[@Robf8621]

never played this but EQOA on the ps2 was my childhood lol

[@mightylotan]

There's something I love about EQII graphics. I love playing occasionally. The skill bloat is what really annoys me though

[@magdalenanurlaneva3580]

they better make everquest III soon... i'm dying to see the third game!

[@doctorfishopolisss]

Gotta do project 99 or project quarm EQ classic!

[@zedorian6547]

I enjoy my time whenever I decide to log in EQ2 for a while. Its not my mmo of choice for sure but the game has been enjoyable enough. I usually only hear about how bad it is from WoW or post WoW players and vice versa from the older mmo crowd. I personally like both systems but I do find that the rush to endgame classification tends to make me not as interested in the game long term wheras the journey usually keeps me coming back even if i dont pump 100s of hours into the game in one go. Eh, I’ll most likely be back soon even if my next foray will probably be to adventure in Vana’diel with EverQuest 1….I mean Final Fantasy XI!

[@dennisblogg]

Regarding the graphics. It's unusual to see a game that is kinda realistic. That makes it look better than it would otherwise.

[@Solciver]

The game was made in the dreaded Dx8 era... I think Sony tried to update the extensions to Dx9, but that seemed to introduce more issues. Not for sure what it is now, but the base code is mostly Dx8 and MS re-wrote a lot of Dx functionality when they went to Dx10 and the introduction of independent GPUs (Remember, tt wasn't that long ago that graphics cards did not have independence from CPU rendering). So modern era games run on different extensions and api for graphic interface. Plus Dx8 was before the introdcution of GPUs that offloaded the rendering from the CPU. So EQ2 was (still is?) a CPU hog. There is a bad function with Dx8 and multi-core processors. Originally when multi-cores came out, you had a natural 'speed hack' going because the game would be split on the cores and only grab the info from the main core. So you where skipping all the processes from the other cores and the speed hack play was on. It was hilarious, you could run the full length of a zone in a couple of seconds.

[@M4ttNet]

Great video. The crafting and housing in EQ 2 is pretty much unmatched. You could just focus on that and spend hours. Regarding the visuals. EQ 2 is in fact stylized. Just not nearly as cartoony exaggerated as WoW. It helps to know the visual heritage of each game that launched within weeks. The original EQ was meant to take D&D High Fantasy (Think Baldur's Gate, Lord of the Rings, etc) into really the first big 3D MMORPG ever. So EQ is what 1999 (and subsequent release years of each content) could do to achieve D&D style high fantasy. EQ was mean to replicate a D&D style gameplay in a persistent work. EQ 2 was a stylized and up-res'd version of EQ. It in fact is quite a bit stylized away from EQ when you compare the two while keeping some of that original inspiration. Lot's of EQ players weren't a fan of EQ 2 and how stylized it was. Those same players absolutely hated WoW for context. I was among those but EQ 2's style grew on me and has surprisingly good visuals in certain areas that I think is a pretty charming mix of styles. WoW was the Warcraft game heritage style translated to 3D MMO. So think Warcraft 1 and 2 with it's old pixelated sprites, bright colors etc. You then saw the jump to Warcraft 3 where they tried to do that same style in a 3D RTS format. WoW then took that into the MMO space. So it's intentionally meant to be cartoony and be a throwback to it's original inspiration of old school Warcraft games. Personally I absolutely HATED the WoW style at launch. I hate it less now, but honestly not by much. I personally think even Everquest looked FAR better than WoW and EQ 2 I think looks even that much better. Nowadays I feel that way even more. That's because I prefer High Fantasy to cartoony fantasy. I personally don't think WoW aged better than even Everquest. I am actually still playing original EQ (played it all the way back in beta test and launch in 1999) and I've tried to play WoW a few times and I 100% think original EQ (for context I play on Project Quarm too which is a private EQ server that is very much like the original) has aged so much better than WoW. WoW looks even more blurry and too cartoony to me now than then. So despite many people holding the view that WoW's blurry graphics aged better, not everyone agrees. It's not an absolute truth. The absolute truth is that WoW's purposely crappy graphics PERFORMED better than either EQ or EQ 2. Which correlated to their far easier and friendlier gameplay appealing to a much broader audience. In this way I think EQ 2 was actually not worse than WoW. It was developed to it's target quite well.. WoW just targeted a whole new demographic expansion. Many people like me hated the things about WoW that the mass audiences loved... Quest grinding vs kill grinding. Constant rewards... Easier and more forgiving etc. All these was massive pluses to a whole big group and HUGE negatives to an existing MMO player base. It's interesting that game difficulty and challenge has come full circle in a lot of ways. Thinks like Souls games being so popular for being so brutal. Then what's one of the most popular modern WoW phenomenon's? WoW Hardcore, basically making WoW more challenging than it was even at launch. Ironically in a lot of ways that screams how good and correct the original EQ's model was and kind of wins the philosophical argument in the long run. EQ with it's corpse runs and EXP lost honestly is probably a much more balanced hardcore mechanic version than permadeath and would be immensely popular now in other MMO games. While criticized at the time for being too hardcore for new WoW era MMO players. The gaming playerbase has essentially evolved into the same sort of desires and challenges that EQ era MMO players were at in 1999.

[@CB-py1xh]

The WoW graphics were no doubt the most ugly contribution to 2000s visual game design. I was 18 years old when WoW launched and I despised its art direction. I coined a word for that visual direction back than for use in my conversations with other teenagers, that would translate into English as "warcraftiness". That bs became very popular back than after the beautiful fantasy art of the 90s.

[@Lepa1794]

i like this visiting other mmorpg series

[@doppl3GENGAR]

I miss EverQuest Online Adventures Frontiers on the PS2 💔

[@aceoyame2619]

The graphics were actually better on launch as they had cpu based lighting and shadows but it was way too taxing so eventually they moved it to shaders which broke a lot of lighting effects

[@MrSmithwayne]

I have never had a problem with EQ2 on my 4 year old PC

[@isaacjacobs4397]

Man i miss this era of gaming. Guildwars was fun

[@kennethcunningham8461]

My experience was that’s it’s fun but when you get to the “endgame” the biggest obstacle is other players

[@viljakainu1548]

'Journey is half the fun' right? Ahhh, the memories, the frustrations. :) ... yes, that phrase is a weak in-joke.

[@MoonsideResident]

The super obvious head-tracking that the NPCs did on EQ2 always freaked me out, lol.

[@wintersteale8869]

I love the journey and games having loads of content. I am not one to power level through games. I played EQ2 for many years with a handful of friends. The main reasons we all quit playing was the slimy cash grab constantly thrown in your face, the ridiculous amount of abilities taking up half the screen and even with a lot of content when you make another character it becomes tedious repetitions and boring as all hell. I love the housing system, character creation options, mount mechanics and the mercenary system. I have never played WOW as the amount of money needed to actually play the game is disgusting. I quit LOTRO for that reason as well. I believe games should either charge you up front OR a subscription but not both. Having extra items and fancier outfits is fine but being locked out of content and/or mechanics due to a pay system is an extremely slime ball option by greedy devs that I refuse to participate in.

[@MasterTeeee]

There are extremely popular private servers for most games, that are fan run, completely free, and normally have some interesting spins/additions to the retail experience. You should check some of them out. 🎉

[@GamerTeah]

I was excited for the birth of my nephew so i could teach him how to heal in eq2 i was going ot make him my little side kick. then right after he was born they came out with companions lol!

[@MoonsideResident]

8:45 This was my #1 grievance with the game and why, despite how much I liked so many things about it, I couldn't get myself to keep playing it. The combat was beyond tedious and boring and when I asked the playerbase about strategy and things like that, it seemed like the consensus was "Don't bother with the combo system, just press abilities as they come off cooldown." So riveting.

[@AaronCunnington]

The class synergy and healing mechanics in this game are S tier. I’ve played a LOT of MMOs and nothing comes close to EQ2 in this regard.

[@eligaller9190]

EQ2 is getting a API update to dx11. Now (dx9)i get no more frames on a 3070ti than my buddy on a 750ti

[@seanstuchbery]

you had VAG memories😳😳

[@Waydots]

I've always struggled with that word LOL