call me weird, but I actually liked earlier version on EQ2, than the later.
Not at the very start - it was buggy as hell, but about 1 year later, after 1st expansion.
I liked how EQ2 was much more solo friendly than eq1, but without insane easiness than came later on. For example you could run around soloing, but if want to do your armor quests, you had to group up. And since everyone was doing those quests, it was very easy to find groups for them, so it wasn't a problem.
I LOVED LOVED LOVED EQ2 crafting system. I could log in for hours and do nothing but craft away for days. But i was extremely frustrated when they dumbed it down by removing sub-combines, which resulted in flooding the market with instantly crafted items all over.
I liked how on one hand world was split into 2 opposing factions, but wasn't restricted as hard as in WoW (you could still group with your friends from the other side, where in WoW you can't even send a tell to your friend on other faction, even on non PvP server, which I hated)
I liked how both sides had their own market system, yet there was the fence, and I enjoyed smuggling goods from one side to the other for profit. But at some point they combined both markets into one, which imho, really sucked...
On other hand, it wasn't without some rather weird design approaches:
24 classes, where 12 would do, was weird, and grown more ridiculous when i realized that some of the "pairs" were nearly shadowed copies of each other. How was it logical that both versions of druids could start in both good and evil sides, yet Conjurers (ala mages) could only be good? They managed to fit in as many as 3 different Rogue stile classes, yet somehow managed to drop off Beastlords...
Overall, I loved and was amazed at EQ2 initially. Specially the elaborated zone scenery not found in eq1 - don't have to go far - just look at Antonika, and realize how blunt eq1 world was. Not because of its 5 year old graphics, at the that point, but because of its emptiness and lack of any sort of zone layout features
But then they started to dumb things down. A lot. In their desperate attempt to catch up with WoW, they moved away from what they had right. Many group encounter found in variety of zones were lowered down to solo difficulty.
While they still added many good things since then, I felt like at the end, they are not moving in the right direction. I decided that I will not be investing my time into it, knowing that I won't like it at the end.
If there is one reason to like Emu, is that you can make yourself anything you want and deem right.
[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]