Lazaretto wrote:That mount looks terrible, it's face is deformed and it has 3 legs.
TTobeyQuote:It does only have three legs. Norrath is a magical place.
SmokeJumperWe call him "Tripod".
Seriously though, its a good looking wolf to me, it could certainly look better if they added in new fur/hair shaders. Alas though, when the main competitor in the industry is drawing hexagon oranges and doing great there isn't much competition to make things look better these days.
Lazaretto wrote:I guess they only add the good looking mounts to the cash shop. Seriously, my original EQ mounts look better than that thing. As for the new race, I bet it will be available for only $4.99 from the cash shop - while supplies last. I'm a bit disappointed with what has been coming out from SOE lately. If you look at EQ & EQ2 players, just about every news post is for something new in the cash shop. What about all the new content that comes with a subscription? Oh yeah, you have to wait for Velious.
Its half and half with that, they have been putting too much effort into the virtual items and EQ2X in general over the past year, although I hope now its out things can move on (and I have to admit I didn't expect them to be as successful moneywise as they have been).
But the one good thing SmokeJumper has done since GU58 is to change it so that items for the marketplace also have a version acquirable in the game. That does significantly change things since before SC purchases only funded SC development.
On virtual items though I have to take a swipe at WoW, to celebrate their sixth year they announce players get an achievement for logging in and a ingame email thanking them, and then they add another couple of virtual pets to their marketplace, that was stingy, with their money they should have done better.
Lazaretto wrote:Will they improve game performance so you can actually turn on spell effects and decent graphics in raids? Doubtful. Finally, SmokeJumper's arrogance is too much to handle. I've seen several interviews with him recently and watched him at FanFaire this year and he really is clueless. You would think he invented the MMO like Al Gore invented the internet. Scott Hartsman, who he recently made several smart comments about indirectly, could eat him for breakfast.
Well on spell effects for me they were fixed with GU57, I can actually see what's going on now. Performance wise I run on extreme at all times, it could be better and its still a priority from recent comments on the forums. But over the past 2 years things have improved a lot.
I'm actually more concerned we don't go the way of Planetside here and once it runs fast enough the graphics are allowed to just stagnate (I can hit as high as 360 FPS there).
As for Dave Georgeson its clear you've not liked him from day one, personally I think he's got experience and has shown a lot of understanding of gameplay problems. He's actually playing the game himself and its very refreshing to see a producer come at problems and explain his changes from the viewpoint of how the game actually works, rather then how it should work.
The more he communicates with the player base on the forums definitely the better, its still early days but I think he has a lot of potential to improve EQ2. The one thing that does bug me about all these game designers though is their single minded focus to making the game more accessible to new players, rather then a balanced approach that simplifies for new players but adds depth for experienced ones.
Those posts on the forums were directed at the ever present merchants of doom who are either decrying the end of days, or rapidly hyping up WAR,AoC,Aion or whatever other MMO is about to kill EQ2. I'd agree too with his comments, too many companies are spending the big money to emulate WoW's success without either innovative new gameplay or the depth of content built up (I'd add too that WoW has a massive draw socially just due to the size of its userbase). He's bullish but he's talking about the concept of EQ1 being made by his company.
The original posts are here at page 52.
I like Scott's work too, I came late to the party but I am still impressed just how different to other MMO's EQ2 feels in areas. He's the main reason that Rift is interesting to me, but he's also not perfect, gameplay wise EQ2 in its early levels is too simple at times in dungeons, and the decision to add in percentage stats in an MMO was very short sighted, his game design though certainly evolved over the expansions.
