The strange life, death, after-life and rebirth of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes.

In another time and place Vanguard was meant to be a haven for the old-school MMO player, the kind of people who suffered through early game play mechanics like corpse-runs and hell levels and thought it perfectly normal, even desirable. Turned sour by the perceived “dumbing-down” of the genre by titles like World of Warcraft, there was a feeling of an itch unscratched, a space asking to be filled where the disaffected hard-core MMO players of old could find solace.

Of course, this kind of thinking almost never *really* pans out. But in the case of Vanguard, it met its first death for other reasons entirely…

Without rehashing entirely too much history and unfounded rumors, let us say that Vanguard ultimately started its decline because of poor product management and some technical problems that to this day bedevil the title. What most people do not realize, however, is how close the game actually came to delivering on its stated goal of offering up a sand-box like environment that would let you adventure freely, largely unencumbered by “zones” and “instances”. In fact, Vanguard to this day has only 2 instanced areas in its entire HUGE play-space: The Isle of Dawn starting area for new players and one Raid area later on in the game, both added post launch.

And this game is MASSIVE. In science-fiction there’s a term, Big Dumb Object, used to describe “any mysterious object in a story which generates an intense sense of wonder just by being there.” Think the original Ringworld by Larry Niven or the smaller ring habitats of the Halo series. That’s what being plunked down into the world of Vanguard is like, the setting itself is part of the experience, a fantasy world that at times seems nearly boundless. And it’s not just full of empty space either, there are areas of the game fully fleshed out that most people will never see. The people behind Vanguard thought BIG and it shows, they fully expected it to be the next big thing and designed the game to hold those teeming masses.

So you have a huge world, largely realized, and gameplay mechanics more difficult that most other MMOs out there, but not overly so. What could possible go wrong? More than anything, the one thing that started Vanguard down its journey to the afterlife and beyond was the horrible performance issues the game suffered from at launch.They were crippling and as it turned out, largely not fixable for years because of poor technical design decisions when the game was being built on a modified Unreal “2.5” game engine. Players pleaded for performance fixes and changes but none came in the first few months, things behind the scene with Sigil and SOE had hit rock bottom and finger pointing had lead to a development team largely left paralyzed. Players left, *in droves*, and in just a few months after launch, the fate of Vanguard was obvious to all but a few dedicated fans.

And then things start to get *really* weird.

“It’s not how big it is, it’s how you use it..”

The years tick by and development on Vanguard slowly trickles down to a near halt, is revived for a new starter zone, character models and raiding zone, and then stops. The dreaded “maintenance mode” is announced and all bug fixes and developer support are halted. At this point, Vanguard is well and truly dead, It’s reached its end point and will go no further. And yet…the game goes on. Players continue to subscribe and even thrive from time to time as the MMO world around it waxes and wanes. Word of mouth keeps the game going, with utterances like “The best and last true MMO out there” becoming common cause in the back channels of the MMO players world. In the larger world, a shift is occurring as more and more MMO titles leave the “free to player” stigma behind them and embrace what is proving to be a very profitable and successful strategy for the western markets. Once the area of cheap Asian trash MMO’s, free to play (f2p) has been embraced and modified for the sensibilities of westerners and titles like Lord of the Rings Online, Everquest 2, Age of Conan and scores of others are now not just surviving but *thriving*. Long starved of oxygen by World of Warcraft, other MMO’s have adopted a winning strategy just as the Juggernaut of the MMO world starts to lose market, and most importantly, mind share.

Which brings us, more or less, up to the present with Vanguard. Now a cult favorite that’s survived 2 years of neglect, the game none-the-less managed to undergo some important performance changes before that dread “maintenance mode” announcement. There are still issues here and there, that can’t be denied, but with a little tweaking players can by and large eliminate 95% of any performance issues. And if your so inclined, there are even performance guides out there for people wanting to take that tweaking to the next level, but it’s not really necessary. Visually, the game does very well. Character models are perhaps a weakness at times, but the world is visually an amazing treat for the eyes.And in this day and age, advances with things like the post processing FXAA tool allow you to visually tweak the game to look just about how you want it while adding low performance hit anti-aliasing.

So you have a cult-sleeper like hit on your hands that offers a massive, open world to explore, 19 races to choose from, 15 classes and 3 “spheres” of gameplay. You look around and see how well other f2p games have done and indeed, your own recent efforts in that area have turned in huge profits and player increases for other MMOs once thought gone to seed. So what do you do? You guessed it, you give the game yet another chance, put some developers on to transition it over to f2p and offer up some new game content and bug fixes.

And that’s wonderful, because quite honestly this game is really, really fucking good.

In a time where other games are emphasizing how easy things are to get into, how no choice you make is final, Vanguard gives you a sense of accomplishment without beating you over the head and rubbing your face in the mud. You are going to die, and sometimes it’s going to suck, but it teaches you to pay attention to what you’re doing in the game. And the class choices are fantastic, diverse and fun to play. Vanguard was meant to an immerse world you could get lost in and accomplish things, and all of that is still there. The community is by and large, fantastic, but a little trepidacious about the upcoming (still rumored to some) transition to the f2p model.

So change and renewed life is coming to Vanguard, and I for one welcome it with open arms. The Free to play announcement is expected in March, around the time Everquest 1 goes live with its own free to play version. And so Vanguard goes on, too stubborn to die and facing an optimistic future. And those, my friends, are words I *never* expected to write.

 

Neverwinter Nights 2 Performance Tweaks

 

Neverwinter Nights 2 Performance Tweaks, Fixes and Extras

 

So long! And thanks for all the fish! No more updates as December 10th, 2006.

I tried. Really I did. I did everything I could do to help others with their problems with nwn2 and said all the positive things I could about the game. The fact is, it’s buggy and flat out unoptimized, even after the 1.03 patch. I’ve got a pretty good higher end system and I still have problems getting my FPS above 21 in Neverwinter with it dropping down to 14 at times. The horrible multiplayer support is just the topping on the cake. Maybe in 4-5 months when it’s patched and optimized I’ll give it another look. I’m sure there is a good story in there somewhere, but the horrible performance of the game renders it useless.

Very unhappy with Obsidian and by extension Bioware. My advice to Bioware is thus, if you’re going to have your name attached to a game in any manner, make sure it’s up to your own standards. This one wasn’t, and by extension, you share in the blame for a game not worthy of your reputation.

-Visceral

 

 

What’s New: Week of December 2 – December 8

New ATI beta drivers comes with new AA functionality that works in nwn2. Details here.

Evens AI. AI overhaul for the offical campaign that fixes many henchmen issues. Here.

DMFI Dungeon Master scripts. Great tool for anyone wanting more control over a campaign. Here.

Obsidian’s Guide to Better Framerates here.

Performance Tweaks and Improvement

How to remove Securom and get better performance

**Important caveat. While this method will improve performance, it has the potential to be inconvenient. Essentially, you are removing a copyright protection service running in the background on your machine. Once you remove it, you must boot the game with a no cd/dvd patch like the one from reloaded. This has some side effects. One, should you run the NWN2 Update program, it will return an error regarding a download. This is because the patcher is checking the .exe file to see what version you are running and it will find a mismatch. Multiplayer suffers a similar issue. When trying to enter multiplayer, it will inform you a new version is available. Clicking “yes” launches the updater and the above problem occurs. Saying “no” returns you to the main menu…however..clicking multiplayer *again* launches the server browser. What I’m not sure of is if you can still join a multiplayer game at that point, it hangs on me when I try. *Confirmed: You must be using the original .exe files to play multiplayer.

**IMPORTANT: If you have any other games that depend on securom, this will disable the copy protection as well, possibly leaving you unable to play the game without re-installing it.

If you are looking for a performance increase, and multiplayer isn’t an issue, just do the following:
Download this program discussed here. Follow the instructions in the first forum post at guru3d. This will remove the securom service from running on your machine.
Now, download the no CD/DVD patch here. Look for the one by “Reloaded”
Go to your NWN2 install directory. In my case it’s C:\Program Files\Atari\Neverwinter Nights 2
Create a folder called “bak”
Move the nwn2.exe and nwn2_amdxp.exe into the “bak” folder.
UN-Rar the patch from “Reloaded” and place the two .exes into your main NWN2 folder.
Boot the game normally; it will load up without a CD/DVD and without Securom.

When a patch is released, you will need to move the nwn2.exe and nwn2_amdxp.exe files from your install directory and replace them with the original ones now in “bak”. You can now patch. This will however re-install securom! You’ll need to rinse and repeat the above process after you’ve patched.

NWN2 cd/dvd not being authenticated. Fix here.
Unpacking module hang fix here.
Realtek HD Audio 7.1 enabeling EAX. Here.
NWN2 Offline patcher. Patch your NWN2 without using the official patcher and patch it to whatever version you want. Here.
Turning “off” Object Fading under options appears to add a nice number of FPS to the game. Here.

A reader offers the following advice for those using anti-virus and running nwn2.

—Antivirus—
DO NOT RELAY ON SWITCHING YOUR ANTIVIRUS ONTO SLEEP MODE. I run eTrust Vet Antivirus and the sleep antivirus protection forget’s one crucial eliment, auto update and resources to still have the thing in the background. My advise is to shut down your antivirus protection all together before running nwn2.

If you use point lights, try setting them to 4 instead of >4. Discussion here.

XFIRE Performance problems TURN OFF XFIRE.
Even though it’s offered as an install with the game, it causes *massive* slow downs with just about everything. Alternatively, you can use the Xfire work around here.
Increase the amount of memory the game uses for the Special Effects System (SEF) . For 1 gig of memory or greater.

Open up you nwn.ini file in the C:\Documents and Settings\whateveruser\My Documents\Neverwinter Nights 2 folder.
Look for SEFCacheSize= and change the value to 50

“SEFs are ‘special effects’ systems. In order to keep from having to load and parse the .SEF files that define special effects, there is a caching system in place.
Systems can fall out of the cache because the cache gets too full, or because they go for a certain length of time without being accessed.
I’m not sure if tuning those values will provide any performance improvements, as the default values are pretty reasonable. Making those values larger makes it so that SEFs reside in memory longer, which will increase the memory footprint of the game slightly but reduce how often the game has to go to disk to load special effects. Lowering those values will reduce the memory footprint slightly, but make it so that the game has to load the special effects sytems from the disk more frequently, which may cause a performance hit. Hope that clears that up. 🙂 -Rich”

Original Developer Post here.

Single Card with Vsync Performance Tips using Triple Buffering here.
Possible performace increase for AMD users.
If you’re an AMD user. There is a nwn2main_amdxp.exe file in your install folder. Some AMD users say this helps them out considerably, others report no change.

NWN2 resets speakers to 2/2.1. Fix Here.
Logitech Camera drivers preventing Soundblaster X-Fi and EAX from functioning. Fix here.
Install the latest (October 2006) version of Dirext X.
The latest version of Direct X was released in October. Even if you have you think you have the latest version, if you installed it any time before October 2006 you should install *this* version because often newer games take advantage of and run better with the latest version of Direct X. Get it here. Discussion here.

Remove intro movies
Rename the .bik files in your movies folder, you’ll see which ones to rename, like wotclogo.bik, etc. This removed all the stupid movies that load when you boot the game.
Also, this appears to be an easier method suggested by a reader. “Open My Documents/Neverwinter Nights 2/nwn.ini and under [Display Options] add Disable Intro Movies=1”

Black chat box problem FIX here.
Gamecopy world has several NO DVD patches here.

*Note I do NOT condone piracy, but you have the right to play the game you paid for as you see fit and using a no dvd patch is not piracy anyway. The “reloaded” patch seems to be the one of choice.
**Additional Note: I’ve discovered that playing the game with the “reloaded” no dvd patch disables water effects. You can turn them on all you want but when you leave the menu, they reset to “off”. I have no idea why.

Nvidia Specific Tips

93.71 Nvidia drivers optimized for NWN2 actually decreases performance. The fix is here.

The Nvidia profile points to the wrong .exe file… change it and that will fix your low fps problems with the new patch – worked for me.

Performance tweaks for Nvidia users
Be sure to download the newest Nvidia drivers and use the Neverwinter Nights 2 profile that is now available.

Disable ATIWorkAround
Open the nwn.ini file in your my documents folder. Find “ATIWorkAroundForPointLightShadows=1”
Nvidia users report changing this to 0 really increases FPS

Nvidia SLI Tips for NW2 here.

“Install 93.71 drivers
2. Use Nhancer to add all .EXE files in NWN2 root directory to Neverwinter Nights 2 profile.
3. Vsync off
4. Leave pre-defined SLI profile as is (its awesome)
5. Verify with GPU balance bar that shadows and bloom don’t null SLI.
6. Currently, the water settings are still FPS killers
7. Have Fun as one of the very small percentage of players that can play the game in its glory This works miracle with this game as I can confirm with my Geforce 7950 GX2.
NB! Remember to untick the two water settings though.”

 

ATI Specific Tips

 

Use ATI TRAY TOOLS? Read this.

Reader advice on setting “Flip Queue Size” setting for ATI card using ATI Tray Tools to 2. Gives a performance increase.

—Flip Queue size—
MY Card: ATI Radeo 9600 Pro
Yes I know I should have purchased a new card ages ago but buy putting all settings onto low I have been able to play most games at 15 – 20 FPS therefore just getting buy. Anyway, My point here is to advise that with my setup by running ATI Tray Tools and setting all setting to High Performace Ive been able to run at 10 FPS. This has resulted in me trying to get the most out of my system thus finding that if you set the Flip Queue Size to “2″ I’m now running around at 15 – 30 FPS therfore allowing me to hold out until the Direct X 10 cards are out next year.

New ATI drivers based on the recently released 6.10. These have optimizations for NWN2 among other games. Get there here. Make sure you view the info on how to set them to run for NWN2. Also, new offical ATI drivers from ATI today. Here.

*The NWN2 profiles doesn’t require you to do anything:

“Neverwinter Nights 2 doesn’t have settings that can be altered from the registries. So, i had to put a config file in the driver. The file will be automatically placed in the right placed. Next time you start NWN2, it will use those settings. Check the installer box if you have NWN2 on your system.”

Windows Vista Specific Tips

Menu problems while running NWN2 in Vista. A fix or two here.

My totally subjective Vista RTM performance observations for nwn2. Here.

Things that make the game more fun to play

More advanced crafting system. You can plug it into the offical campagin. Here.

Smaller Minimap here.

Add up to 6 NPCs in your party in Chapter 1. Here.

Alternative AI for Henchmen. Here.

Even newer and improved UI. This stuff is good. Get it here.

Drive camera fix

In the nwn.ini file in My Documents, find
CameraFollowAlways” and make it “1” It will make the
drive camera no longer float off if you turn around.

Slates UI Mods here.
WoW Style camera controls here or here. How to “De-Level” and re-roll your character here.
How to play the official campaign without using henchmen (sorta) here.
UI changes to the text box here.
Get a full Watch uniform from the watch quests instead of just a cloak here.
No or little delay right context menu display

Go into Game Options | Gameplay/Audio and change the Context Menu Delay down to 0.10. After adjusting to the lowest setting, it’s a much more enjoyable UI and overall experience with the game.

Give your Tiefling characters a REAL tail here.
Edit your OC Characters (Save Games) here. This is related to the above post on tails.
Using the GFF Editor to change the skin tone and height of your character here.
Using the GFF editor mentioned in the tail tweak to set your helmet display status.

Look for a “neverdrawhelmet” draw helmet option. Setting this to 1 will make it so your helmet is never displayed, even when being worn. You can do the same for your companions buy editing their files. There is no “Universal” neverdrawhelmet tweak, it must be done on a character by character basis using the GFF editior.

Slim health bars. Thread here. Download Here.
Unlock the pre-order Merchants Friend and Blessed of Waukeen feats here.

“Go into the console (~) and type: DebugMode 1
givefeat 1765
givefeat 1764
DebugMode 0 1765 is BoW, 1764 is Merchants friend.”

 

 

 

The Best MMORPG You’re Not Playing

By Rob Willmore

In this, the age of World of Warcraft, it’s easy to forget that there are alternatives to Blizzards 300 lb Gorilla in the Fantasy MMORPG space. No, I’m not talking about the other surprise of the year, Guild Wars, I’m talking about Everquest 2.

*crickets*

There, see what I mean? Mention Everquest 2 to just about any gamer these days and you’re going to get the “Have you just smoked crack?” look from those you are attempting to converse with. The problem EQ2 faces is one of perception. The game is widely perceived to be tedious, have hardware requirements that are ridiculous, favors punishing players and be way too involved for the casual gamer.

All of it true. Of the game a year ago.

18 Live updates later, the game continues to undergo a rules renaissance. The design mistakes were legion, and thankfully, so are the fixes.

The Game Today

January 2006 marks a major turning point for Everquest 2 and its attempt to reform and redeem itself in the eyes of MMORPG players. This month will see the launch of Live Update #19, an update that should cap off a litany of changes begun earlier in the year when Sony decided to take a long, hard look at what they were doing wrong with a game that at one time was the industry leader.

Barriers to entry

EQ2 suffered quite a bit from a list of woes that would cause all but the intensely devoted to eventually log out and stop playing. An important thing to remember when designing any MMORPG: Anything that causes your customers to want to log out and stop playing is a bad, bad thing. In a nutshell, in an attempt to make the game more appealing to the kind of customers it enjoyed with EQ1, Sony tried building in time sinks to the game that would keep people playing, and paying, for months on end. Unfortunately for Sony, Blizzard redefined the way a MMORPG should be played by giving the customers what a majority of the customers wanted. A game that is fun, easy to play and can be enjoyed without having to spend 20+ hours a week doing stupid, tedious things that serve no purpose (Well, at least up until the Battlegrounds patch. Nobody is perfect.) As a result, EQ2 quickly all but disappeared into the shadow of WoW and what was once designed to be an industry leader in the MMORPG space became little more than a niche player in a space it once dominated.

To give you an idea of just how bad it was, consider this. You want to sell your hard earned good and crafts. You log into your house, open up a selling “bulletin board” and sit there, watching it, for hours. You can’t log off, you must sit there for hours watching this board so other players can see and purchase your goods.

For hours.

This isn’t a joke, this is the way selling actually worked in eq2. This is how far the insanity had gone. At some point saner heads prevailed and this was changed, allowing the customer to actually play the game or even log off while their goods were displayed for sale. From that point on it seems someone or someone(s) at Sony had finally gotten the message: We are becoming irrelevant because we are not giving our customers what a majority of them want. What followed was a list of changes that practically remade the way the game was played.

But is it too late?

“The Dead Collector: ‘Ere, he says he’s not dead.
Large Man with Dead Body: Yes he is.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn’t: I’m not.
The Dead Collector: He isn’t.
Large Man with Dead Body: Well, he will be soon, he’s very ill.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn’t: I’m getting better.
Large Man with Dead Body: No you’re not, you’ll be stone dead in a moment.”

Having someone come out of left field to dominate the space you once owned has got to be demoralizing (Just ask USC about those Longhorns!). Having someone come out of left field and so totally dominate you with *millions* of subscribers has got to be downright humiliating. World of Warcraft now claims something in the neighborhood of 4 millions subscribers worldwide while Everquest 2 is thought to have something in the much more modest range of 200,000. There would have to be changes, and quickly if the game was to have any chance of surviving much less succeed against such dominating competition. To list every change or tweak made to the game over the last 18 updates would take more time than we have here, so I’ll highlight the most important ones for returning or new players.

A complete combat system revamp. Now for newer players there is going to be little of interest here since you’ll be learning the game “as is” anyway. Older plays, however, will want to check out the changes to combat skills and spell lines. The general consensus among players is that this was a good thing, adding balance and excitement to combat again.

The SOGA models. SOGA is a bastardization of Sony and Gamania (SO+GA), the company selected to publish EQ2 in the Asian market. They are called SOGA models because the publisher felt, correctly, that the models used in the American and European versions of the game would not meet the “Japanimation” standards many Asian gamers are accustomed to. The result being the more humanoid races were given new appearances more fitting to the Asian market. Before the new models could even launch in the Asian version however, screenshots started popping up on the Internet and it soon became clear that quite a number of American and European gamers also liked the new character models and would prefer using them over the original ones the game shipped with. As a result, Sony added the option to use either the American or SOGA character models on a race by race basis. For example, like the American version of the Ogre but hate the Dark Elf? You can simply select the SOGA Dark Elf appearance and any Dark Elves you run across will use those character models. You can do this with any or none of the models that offer the option. There are some races, like the Troll, Ratonga, Kerran, Iskar and Frogloks that maintain only one appearance set, the SOGA models only cover the most humanoid ones. It’s also important to note that when I say appearance set, I mean a huge range of options, not one identical appearance. The options available to character appearance in EQ2 are vast and surpassed only by City of Hero’s and City Of Villains in that regard.

The end of the corpse run. Anyone who has played enough MMORPGs has run into this brilliant idea. It goes something like this: You die and resurrect at a nearby location, leaving behind either a copy of your body with equipment or some of your hard earned experience with it. End result being you must make your way back to the location of your demise, avoiding any roaming beasties, and collect your equipment and or experience. Originally, EQ2 used a variation on this idea by leaving behind a “shard”, something like an etheric double of your character, on the spot you died on. Upon resurrection at a nearby safe point, you’d have to make your way back to your shard and click on it to regain a sizable chunk of experience that would be held back if you choose not to make the run. Compared to the system used in World Of Warcraft, in which you die, appear in spirit form some distance from your body and make the trip back to your corpse at a high speed run and completely invulnerable, the EQ2 system looked more like punishment than game play. Sony finally did away with the whole “shard’ system and now upon dying you simply resurrect at a nearby safe point with a very modest amount of temporary experience loss. This has caused more than a few people to complain that the game is now too easy, the “O Death, where is thy sting?” crowd. However, I think most players would agree the game still offers more than enough challenge without the tedious and often boring corpse run.

Quest Markers for quest givers and purpose tags. Taking a page straight from the WoW handbook, Sony recently decided to add an optional floating icon above the head of NPCs that have a quest to offer you. This is a *great* idea and and I think it hardly matters where it originated at. EQ2 has tons of quests and trying to find them before this feature was added was like trying to pull teeth. Now it’s no problem finding which NPCs have a quest you’re eligible for. And trust me, there are tons and tons of quests available. It’s not uncommon to have over 80 in your quest queue at times. Oh, and if you’re of the opinion this makes the game too easy for you, be my guest and toggle it off, because that’s also an option. Another no-brainer feature recently added to the game is purpose tags. Over the heads of various NPCs you’ll see “Mender” “Merchant”, etc. This allows you to have fun playing the game rather than running up to every cursed NPC you see trying to determine who can sell you the goods you’re in need of.

Live Update 19

This brings us to one of the biggest and most important changes to the game Sony has announced. Sometime in January, Sony plans to completely redefine how players can select their class as well as adding the much clamoured for PvP server. First, let’s tackle the biggest game change of them all, class selection. It’s a little known fact to people who haven’t played EQ2 that there are a staggering 24 classes available to the player. There’s just one problem. You can’t start off as any of them. Now before you accuse me of once again smoking crack, I’ll explain. The character class system as originally envisioned by Sony had you selecting a rather generic “starter class” and as your character evolved and gained levels, you would make choices as to what kind of class you would end up playing. So starting as a Fighter would allow you to play as such up until level 10 where you would then narrow your options down to a Warrior, Brawler or Crusader. Finally, at level 20, you select your final and ultimate class. In the case of the fighter, depending on which of the 3 previous choices you made, these are Berserker, Guardian, Bruiser, Monk, Paladin or Shadow Knight. So in a nut shell, each archetype had 6 final destination classes.

What at first looks like a novel and interesting method of character selection soon develops a major weak point: What if what all you really wanted was just to play as a Paladin or Warden or Fury or any of the 24 final classes? You had to play to the 20th level before you could even try the class out to determine if you liked it, something that did not encourage people trying out play styles and truly finding the class that fit them. Amazingly, Sony has decided that in Live Update 19 you will now be able to start off as any of the “true and final” 24 classes. Want to be a Necromancer? No more waiting until level 20 until you can even get a taste of what that’s all about. Paladin? Same thing. In doing this Sony has finally given the player 24 different play styles that are available right from the get go. Finally, Sony has at last decided to allow wide scale PvP in EQ2. Opening sometime in January or February, two new servers dedicated to PvP, good side vs. bad side.

The last barrier and final words

Perhaps the biggest and longest lasting blunder Sony made with Everquest 2 was the insane hardware requirements it takes to run the game.The stated reason from Sony was that Everquest 2 was meant to be scalable for years and years into the future, which is logical. The problem is, they made the options that will only run on future or current high end hardware available *today* in the here and now. This can have a *huge* psychological impact on customers who are use to installing a game and hitting medium, high or maximum and running a game with no problems. Try that on a untweaked EQ2 installation and 95% of the people installing it will be watching a slide show. Sony should have hidden the really high end settings until such time as the hardware that supported them was widely available on the market and then made them available with an update/patch. There are some maximum settings in EQ2 that from the day of launch required a video card with 512 megs of onboard RAM. Instead you get customers complaining to their friends and families that the games bogs down and refuses to play or that it runs like @!$%# compared to that other famous MMORPG. A huge mistake on Sony’s part that they will continue to pay for well into the future. In spite of this, if you have a current generation or previous generation video card, the settings in EQ2 can be tweaked to be very playable and look gorgeous indeed. Screenshots do not do this game justice, seeing it run in real time on a decent video card does.

So is EQ2 set to come back from behind and retake the MMORPG crown from Blizzard? Not a chance. Remember, this is the age of World Of Warcraft and nothing can change that. However, if you want a game that is making leaps and bounds and isn’t afraid to change in order to get something right, EQ2 might just be for you. Think WoW in some ways, but deeper character development and much more in the way of updates. In short, it’s a game that doesn’t suck anymore and should be given a first or even second chance by those who like playing MMORPGs. Give it a shot, you can usually find EQ2 available for under $20 by just using Froogle, CD universe has it for $18.79 with your first month free.

See you in Norrath.