Worst MMO Ever? - EverQuest 2 

I worked on some QA for this game a while when they were SOE still. Before that I had ~10,000 hours in game play. The engine was a terrible dumpster fire. It was built on the idea single core clock speeds would keep going up and graphics cards would be "secondary." Processor with 4.2Ghz speed was better than a multicore and super video card. Faces were highly customizable for the defunct "SoEmote" option that would animate character face based on the user camming their face. They have LOTS of dragons, but that's a drakota because its not a dragon because it doesn't have 4 legs and isn't intelligent. Seeing you right click everything and not hitting the attack buttons faster is painful for me lol. Camera is a shit show, they have LOTS of settings to modify it behavior though. Using Steam to check player numbers for ANY game that existed before Steam is always going to be quite bad. That's not to say there are tons of players, but its not ever going to be accurate. 11:07 AHAHAHA oh man, in end game DPS is measured by BILLIONS of damage per second. that's a Carl Sagan "B" billions. 12:45 stealth is meant to work that way, later you get multiple types that cast much faster with additional effects like dropping aggro or even teleporting. 14:50 oh boy. yeah MTX is nuts on EQ2 now. Lots of it is avoidable for "winning" but there are a few for end game like instance resets and buying mercenaries and stat pets. However it is allowing the game to be quite profitable working off whales. They do not want genuine free players AT ALL. It is far more "free to try." Trying to be a "free player" is crippling and in some weird cases would be more expensive than just getting a sub. 21:55 What you did is go to another newbie area like the island, there are several of them. what you need is to find an area with higher enemies and thus higher quests. There are MANY standalone quests that aren't chains. Content in the early game is split into 10 level tiers. So 1-10, 11-20 etc etc. You were working your way through a 1-10 area and then started over in another 1-10 area. 28:35 hitting loading screens on griffons is rare, you just happened to find one that takes you to another area. Most do as you explained, flight paths with carefully curated vistas and usually confined to one map. So I'm not saying all this because you are wrong or bad, just providing context. The fact that none of this was made apparent to a new player is obviously a red flag for the newbie experience. However as you saw hints of they aren't hot on traditional "new player" experience and want people using heroic characters or playing on one of the special ruleset servers. The experience you played hasn't been updated in years, AFAIK, and likely won't be any time soon.

Also. WoW had an ACTIVE campaign against everquest, with ads in magazines that stated "Would you rather be killing rats" directly targeting EQII's early game grind

Honestly, I can totally imagine an MMORPG "Tour Group" - a massive community of players who agree to spend some amount of time leveling up together on a new MMORPG. It would allow people to explore old games without the need to do it solo or with whatever the current player base is.

The point of Gryphons and flight paths is a huge one. I remember in the early days of WoW, taking a flight path from Ironforge to Wetlands (I think?) and along the way seeing The Burning Steppes and Searing Gorge below me. High level zones that would be deadly to my level 20 Dwarf Hunter. It's a view of where the game will take me at my later levels and it gave the world a grander sense of scale and danger which was amazing!

I love how he's surprised that the evil maniacal clown laugh is on an undead knight in the tutorial. It's the exact same sound from lvl 1 Decaying Skeletons in every newbie zone in EQ1 since 1999 😁

When this game came out, crafting was a potentially lethal undertaking as well as combat. I remember all the corpses laying around the forges.

Making a comment that no one will read on a two year video because of how much I cared about this game. I miss this game. The comment from steam about " there being two separate games" is 100% accurate. You can tell when the quality went downhill, around the time they stopped including voiceovers (I think Shadow Odyssey?) There was so much detail and effort put into this game for many years (they had lore written in books that were in game, that you could take and put on a bookshelf in your in-game home!), and now it's end game content for long time players, and that's it. As you showed in this video, they really don't care about the new player experience. IF they had, you would have known that you could have opened more than one skill hotbar. Sometime around 2010 they made a "golden path" that was supposed to guide new players through the game, but it was never "official" and nothing was really implemented to guide you to it. The starting area that you picked was one of the two original starting areas (the other was the exact same map, but with evil). Those two starting areas were actually removed from the game later on in favor of Frostfang Sea (which you visited, not a huge fan of it but it's level 1 to level 20 for new good players), and Timorous Deep (added in what is my opinion the last good expansion, Rise of Kunark). Also, the evil faction is more popular in this game than the good faction. I always figured (and heard from several others) that it's because the layout of Freeport is better than Qeynos. Most of your qualms with the game were added way later on. A lot more of your complaints could have easily been remedied if the new developers actually cared about pulling new people in, and improved the old areas. But there's no incentive to do that, because all the current players have been playing for years now, and any new players are brought in because of those old players and they just buy the max level boost. Everquest 2 was amazing for many years. Especially after the acquisition of SOE by DBG, the game quality fell to the wayside in favor of "hehe big number go up". The story (as loose as it is) is so convoluted now and ingrained in the cities, that even on timelocked servers that have only the first expansion unlocked, the npcs will mention events that haven't happened yet (like the NPCs in the main cities mentioning how happy they are that Luclin is whole again, but that doesn't happen for many, many expansions). The mechanics have changed so much since beginning, that even with the timelocked servers, you aren't getting the original experience. Everquest 2 occupied a large part of my childhood, even into my teenage years. I'll always remember it for what it was, and always lament it for what it has become. I started on the PvP server Venekor, which eventually got merged into the PvP server Nagafen, which eventually merged with non-PvP servers when they shut down PvP totally (they didn't want to balance their classes because hehe big number go up). Now the PvP servers you can play now are timelocked to the first expansion (Desert of Ro). The server population is usually pretty high when these PvP servers start, but fall off almost completely before the second expansion ever unlocks. (They also pander to a core number of higher end players on the PvP server, causing further balance issues, but that's a gripe for another comment). This video made me feel a lot of emotions. It was a game that I felt very passionately about for a long time, and I got to witness its decline first-hand. Rest in piece, EQ2. Also, as in EQ1, Qeynos, the good city, is SonyEQ spelled backwards.

The Everquest skeleton laughter is iconic for me. I love it.

For me, Everquest 2 will always be the housing system. I remember playing it for a bit a few years back and not being terribly impressed, but then I got myself a lovely room in the frozen north with two floors and a window providing an amazing view of the ocean and nearby penguins. I loved that room so much that I kept playing the rest of the game to spruce up that little spot of respite. I learned the relevant crafting and gathering professions to make furniture and decorations, I killed stuff and leveled up so that I could try out new materials and maybe even get new designs... By the end what was once a simple, empty room with stairs leading to smaller empty room had a kitchen, a living room, dining room, three bedrooms, and a library. And the library actually works! You can put actual in-game books of your choosing on the shelves and read them whenever you like! And you can take those books off the shelves, go downstairs, and read them in front of the fireplace! People still sometimes say that WoW should have a housing system, and the dev team as well as players who don't know better just point to the garrison and say "there you go, have fun". They're missing the point entirely. Player housing is not about granting mechanical benefits for putting the right size of prefabricated building on the correct predetermined plot. It's an aesthetic, creative experience where the only reward is the satisfaction of getting the rug in just the right spot. It's not an extra place to hearth to for you to sell stuff and use your bank that actively gets worse at the job the more you expand and upgrade it. It's a place to wind down before you log out, a place to hang out with friends and guild members, when you know you want to play but don't know what you want to do... Player housing does not become an irrelevant and abandoned feature as soon as the next expansion drops. It's a little slice of the game you carve out for yourself and make your own.

Me at the loading screen - "Ooh, looks like Colossal Dreadmaw." Josh - "Lovely dinosaur, looks like it costs two green and four generic to cast, probably has tramble." ... God damn it Josh

First played EQ 2 in 2020, and quickly went on a quest of betraying my city, becoming an exile, and grinding faction to gain a new home. As far as I can tell, a truly unique experience that involves changing class and was very very fun.

It is so nice to hear someone discuss the success of WoW being the fact that it allowed for solo play. I played EQ1 for a while and was playing FFXI at the time when WoW launched. I will never forget about a week or so after it launched how linkshell members were discussing quitting FFXI because you could level solo in WoW all the way to max level. It was mind blowing. WoW changed MMO gaming forever with that one key element, bringing the genre from being very niche to mainstream.

11:50 That was the laugh the skeletons used in Everquest I which reached meme status at the time and it's a beloved memory of the game, so them using it here was quite intentional. :D

I played this game with my dad years ago when I was young young. When I found out it was free, I told my dad and we've been playing it together ever since. it's definitely still one of my favorite games to play

EQ2 did many things right. Cities were big enough that they FELT like cities. Betrayal Quests meant your faction wasn't forever locked in when you rolled your character. The graphics were really amazing. The crafting minigames, I at least, thought were fun. NPC's were voice-acted, and there was a distinct feel and flavor for each area. I loved the flying carpets, and flight paths in general. I actually enjoyed unlocking each area when you still had to do that. But they also committed HORRIFIC blunders. In their quest to make sure they could balance the game, they over-homogenized each class. wizards had elemental nukes and dots, enchanters had psionic nukes and dots, but damage was ... not noticeably different. Not during levelllng, anyway. I LOATHED the "combo moves". I hate combo systems, let me choose what spells I want to use based on the effect of the spells, not on your "if you follow this recipe you'll get bonus damage because reasons". Drops, and crafted gear felt over-homogenized while levelling, too. "Oh, this one has an extra +1 to INT". Woo Woo. I hated the "linked mobs" that no matter if they were 900 yards apart always aggrod as a group. Clearly that was there answer to FD pulling and splitting. Just saying "no, you can't do that anymore." I'll never forgive what they did to Charm. (my EQ1 main was an enchanter). Overall, I think they did a lot more wrong than right. But they did do several things right.

Just logged back into EQ2 after many many years. Loving it. Nostalgia hit satisfied. I played and raided back in 2004-6. The music and atmosphere alone brings back memories of better times. Skeleton laughing and Scarecrow laughing are the best. Never forget them. My fav quest chain in any MMO ever was Claymore.

When I was in high school I played a ton of Everquest 1. And I was lucky enough to get into the Everquest 2 closed beta. The developers designed the game to be 'future proof', so it was impossible at the time to run the game on max settings with any hardware currently available, and it didn't really run well on most systems with the graphics set to low. Even so, the game was a substantial improvement over the original Everquest. In early to mid 2004 I was again lucky enough to get into the WoW Phase 3 Closed Beta. Even in closed beta, WoW was overwhelming better than Everquest 2 in almost every way. The EQ2 beta was filled with bugs, crashed frequently, and its focus on group and raid content meant that it was next to impossible to solo any content after level 10. WoW on the other hand, while it had bugs, it was rare to get an actual crash (I think I only had maybe 1-3 crashes when I played beta, which for a closed beta MMO at the time, was unheard of). And while the talent system, classes, and the ability system they briefly had in beta would change dramatically, it always gave off the feeling of being a completed game (keep in mind that this was in comparison to the current MMO's on the market at the time). When WoW went open beta for a few weeks and the NDA dropped, the world saw what WoW had to offer. It had a much more rich and rewarding quest system, a travel system, and you could actually level up by yourself if you wanted to (you also didn't lose 8 hours worth of exp when you died, and you leveled up MUCH faster). EQ2 devs knew that they wouldn't be able to compete so their best bet was to beat WoW to market and bank on the Everquest name. In the last few months of development, instead of focusing on polishing everything, they instead scrambled to add many features that were already part of WoW. The terrible griffon travel network mentioned in the video is one of those systems that were added. Funnily enough, up until release both games had huge fallowing. And there were constant flame wars about which game would end up on top. When WoW was released however, everything changed. There were a still a handful of EQ2 fans that argued the graphics in EQ2 were better and more realistic and that it's focus on team based combat was better for the community than WoW's solo-able content. But, those fans quickly faded. Since Everquest 2 wasn't popular, and everquest Next was canceled in development (but not before selling a bunch of useless "play early" packs to players), it seems Everquest may be just another dead franchise. It's a shame really. The original Everquest revolutionized the MMO industry. And while you had to go out of your way to find quests and learn the lore, for those that did it was a very rewarding experience. While I doubt I'll every pick up everquest again, I do occasionally think of the fun times I had with friends in high school on my old bard.

My largest gripe about EQ2 at the time it released was that I played as an "Illusionist" this was my classes name. That class had fewer illusions than all other classes with illusions. The Shaman could transform into tons of creatures, and I could do jack all. One of the biggest draws of the class was to "mez" things, or take them out of combat if you pulled too many mobs, crowd control and buffing party members was the idea behind the illusionist, and yet, there were better versions of my spells coming from other classes. I was further done withthe game when the NPCs had better looking armors than was available to the players through raiding on release.

EQ2 was incredible. Some of the best co-op play I ever experienced was a team of three of us. A Paladin, a Druid, and Battle Priest (Cleric). We as a team of three, could cover places that normally took a group of 6. Was great. Then the other two, a husband/wife team, quit EQ2 and it went back burner as I could never find that caliber of players again.

as a little kid who couldn't afford WoW (and i literally got scared of it because of all those addiction stories) I remember finding a free demo of EQ2 maybe a year or so later after its release. First what impressed me that the office pc rig which my dad had could actually run this game pretty well and for me it looked GAT DAMN INSANELY GOOD. Second thing i started as a fairy in this mushroom world which was impressive and huge. I loved th mechanic of the fairy being able to glide down when jumping from a hight. So instead of running to the quest-enemies I climed this huge tree and glided down to their location, avoiding other enemy encounters. I think the limit of the demo was lvl 12 and it blew me away how many things, questsand platforming there were to do just to reach this level alone. And the thought about what else is there to explore made me very interested... I played it the whole day deep into the night and enjoyed it a lot... which made me even more scared of WoW... Neither had money for EQ2 too xD

As someone with far too many hours spent in that game... honestly for me the biggest thing that ruined the game was that the devs threw the baby out with the bathwater almost every time they tried to fix anything.

Had a blast playing this when it first launched. Only because my friends switched to WoW I eventually made the jump as well. When I came back to EQ2 several years later, I couldn't find that same feeling again, the game had changed. Faster, easier leveling, streamlined, stripped from it's uniqueness. Sad story really.

I love that the frog jumps around, so cute 🤭

My wife and I used to play Everquest 2, it was one of the only video games I could get her into 🤣 it was very new player friendly, and she was a beast at playing the auction house. Every year we reinstall it to go to to Frostfell.

I remember my parents playing EverQuest and hearing stories about how they played this game with their friends back even before they were married. From their stories it always sounded like the greatest thing ever but when I tried it I couldn’t get into it but it started my wanting to play video games and it was my first real game so I’ll always respect this game

I love the nostalgia I get from watching this. Not just for EQ2 but for EQ. The skeleton laugh is iconic.

Great video, only nitpick would be that they do in fact use actual fantasy names for things, but the few things you ran into that were different, were actually sub-species type things. Drakota aren't dragons, they were made by dragons, and the grobins are just the goblins of that region.

Other than the performance, I still think of this as the best MMO ever made. The class system was incredible. When you blended the classes right to form a raid party, everything snapped together like a puzzle. It was beautiful. I played an illusionist, which, to this day, is the most interesting class I've played in any game.

So here is something hilarious. This game actually has a lot of big voice actors in it. Including Invader Zim's who voices a Gnome in the Wailing Caves (good beginner dungeon in The Commonlands) Definetly my favorite MMO.

As former GM of EverQuest's Luclin server, I can say authoritatively that it's pronounced "Luck-lin," not "Looselin."

33:20 "MMORPGs in a modern era need to cater for solo players." Bingo. Well-said. This is the most important point that I have been trying to hammer into the skulls of the development staff of almost every MMORPG that I have played ever since approximately 2006, when I first started playing another online gaming title, "Final Fantasy XI Online" (I had previously played "EverQuest for Macintosh," my first true MMORPG, in 2005). As a solo player myself, I am happy to hear someone finally to make this statement in a nutshell. Compared to other MMORPGs that I play, "EverQuest II" is not terribly solo-friendly. Specifically, the game overall feels more of a grind than many other similar modern titles, and as you pointed out, the maps, although enormous, feel relatively sparse compared to other titles. One pet peeve of mine toward "EverQuest II" in particular is the lack of sensitivity of the development staff toward the needs of solo players--especially those interested in role-play. For example, back in 2017, Daybreak released the "Planes of Prophecy" expansion pack. One of the perks contained in the Collector's Edition (then available for $89.99 USD) and Premium Edition (then available for $139.99 USD) of that expac was a prestige house, "Sprocket's Interlocking Plane." As a Gnome, I was extremely interested in this house, which was essentially a pair of steampunk-style buildings that could be used as houses placed on a platform floating high in the sky. Unfortunately, I was unable to afford the house initially, and did not know that the price would decrease the following September; therefore, I only purchased the Standard Edition (then available for $34.99 USD). When I later learned, after the release of the next expansion pack, that the editions containing my desired house had become affordable the next September, I was heartbroken. Immediately, I posted a message on the official forums (see forums.daybreakgames.com/eq2/index.php?threads/acquiring-past-clockwork-themed-bonus-items-in-pop-expac.594858/) requesting that this house, together with other related items, be made available during the in-game Tinkerfest festival; however, my post did not receive any response from the developers, and as of July 2022, 5 years after the release of the expac, it has not yet been made available. This situation forced me to consider changing my character race to High Elf, only to encounter a different problem: For some reason, the homeland of the High Elf race, Felwithe (renamed to "New Tunaria"), is not a player city. Instead, it is a dungeon area. This means that High Elves, who are traditionally an arrogant race proud of their heritage, have become refugees, forced to live among others whom they do not enjoy living together with in a foreign city. Someone even posted a message, "High Elf Homes 'URGENT' REQUEST" (see archive.eq2wire.com/showthread.php?p=5063224), desperately requesting a dedicated housing area for the High Elf race, on a non-official forum board, back in 2009, 13 years ago. However, this situation has yet to be remedied. Annoyances such as these seriously detract from the role-playing experience. I have always dreamed of role-playing a mad scientist in an online universe. In terms of "EverQuest II," this means that I initially wanted to be a Gnome fascinated with Clockwork gadgets and steampunk-themed housing; however, my dream house, "Sprocket's Interlocking Plane," seems to have no hope of ever becoming available again; worse, my fallback option, becoming a High Elf, has also been derailed because of lack of a dedicated High Elf player city, which is taken for granted in every other MMORPG that I currently play where the High Elf race is playable. On many occasions, I have seriously considering abandoning "EverQuest II" altogether in order to forget about this nightmare; however, I do happen to like the Clockwork Calamity illusion that allows my character to assume the countenance of the Clockwork Calamity, as well as the "Dok-Tok Mk III" mercenary, a tinkered equalizer clockwork mercenary. Most other MMORPGs periodically re-offer past expansion pack reward items for at least limited durations to players in a similar predicament; however, Daybreak does not do this. Instead, I read on the official forums that it seems that they are afraid to sell the editions of past expansion packs containing reward items because they feel that players might expect them to be discounted, and they do not with to offer them for a discount permanently. Therefore, instead of offering them for a discount, they simply do not offer them at all. Strangely, they do not seem to realize that in doing so, they risk permanently losing paid subscribers for lack of necessary in-game items to enhance their play experience. Dissatisfied, frustrated players are much less likely to maintain paid subscriptions than happy players, and it is difficult to be a happy player if in-game items essential to an expected play experience are deliberately made unavailable for the sake of maximizing developer profit.

I played WoW first and something people don't often appreciate as much about it is how fluid it was, for the time. The controls, the movement, the attacks etc were all quite fluid. I played Everquest 2 *after* already capping a 60 in WoW, and I couldn't play for longer than an afternoon because it felt so janky and clunky in comparison. The same for City of Heroes/Villains, I felt like I was controlling Frankensteins monster (from the movies) compared to the more fluid controls and movement of WoW. Combine that fluidity with the simple, but compelling and appealing 'cartoony' graphics of WoW (despite some seriously dark area's like the Plaguelands) and it's little wonder that WoW took off due to ease of access to more casual players.

EQ2 was absolutely badass when I played from about 2006 - 2009. PVP on the Nagafen server was INTENSE and before they started nerfing certain scout abilities (like point-blank arrow, which had a knock-back effect that let you yeet people off of cliffs) I absolutey loved playing. The Kunark expansion was the height of EQ2 much like Velious was the height of EQ1. I had a great time on the giant maps the Kunark expansion offered, not to mention the raid content was amazing.

Don't think Steam numbers are accurate as a lot of people use the stand alone launchers.

As you probably figured out by now EQ2 was released with multiple starting areas. The city you were in was the human starting area, the enchanted forest area was the fairy/elf starting area, the ice area was the starter area for the Barbarians, and so on, including multiple starting areas inside of each faction (good or evil). Then they decided to chuck it all and make the starter island for all players to start in, both good and evil (and doing it like multiple games, starting with a shipwreck). Once out of these "starter zones" you get the normal point progression. WoW would go on the use that type of business model of creating multiple DLCs to be released around the same time as other games. Only to store them away for when the next big "WoW Killer" came along releasing them close the the other games' release date. Even though it is getting long in the teeth, WoW probably still has 2 or 3 DLCs waiting in the wings for the next big game to come out to drop them on. I always come back to EQ2. I was one of those people who waited till midnight to buy the game by being snuck into the back door of a Gamestop. I play it off and on for about 3 months out of every year. I have 12 characters all around level 60+. I am one of those gamers who find enjoyment in playing every class in the game simultaneously and being the best at that class no matter how many years it takes me.

my experience with EQ2 is a fond one. My dad was playing it and i would watch him for hours so he made me an account. I was Soloing as a ratonga in Temple street, and yes killing rats was a big part of it, but exploring the town was such a memorable experience for me. I'm not sure why since i've never actually quested the zone, but the Commonlands was my favorite. The questing is INCREDIBLEY sparse but something about running through this huge zone and then discovering something you've never seen before was really incredible to me. I think i probably started playing during the Shadow Odyssey because i remember one of the shadow men being near the wizard spire. being killed used to be detrimental to the character so I kept a safe distance and just watched this thing pace back and forth as a creature and then stand still in the silhouette of a person. As i got older and understood actually game functionality it definitely had its faults. But then DayBreak took over. Grinding constantly, one-shot killing mobs in any zone but for the quest zones beating on a mob for ten to twenty minutes. Not being able to make any progress in the expansion. In some cases they just removed the overworld completely and only introduced dungeons i couldn't solo as a brigand. The last three expansions have taken place in three separate lush jungles which was very fun to run through in Vetrovia but got pretty boring seeing it again and again. In fact Vetrovia was the only recent expansion i was able to do. Both parts of Luclin i couldn't solo and thus never finished. Adornments were annoying. Ascension classes are annoying. Having familiars and mount armor and mount leveling is annoying. They just added a grind to go to a dungeon that isn't impressive, kill whatever you need to which could take hours despite being maxed on all the things only to do that several more times. There isn't any gameplay anymore, and its skewed the original content. I one shot kill everything as a level 5 brigand and if i play on a time locked server which doesn't bring back any of the original geometry for Freeport, i get wiped out. I still love EQ2 and I'm still a fool who goes back to it, but once DayBreak took it over they just sucked out the fun for money.

There's a lot to be said about this game and this video is a great insight into how MMOs have changed in the last 15-20 years but also Josh called a frog a lizard and I just think that that's worth discussion

Everquest 1 was my first MMO and I still have amazingly fond memories of it. The coldain ring war for my monk, getting my Monk epic in Kunark, raiding Temple of Veeshan, traveling to the moon, fighting Gods in the Planes of Power. When EQ2 and WoW were announced, it split our raiding guild hard. It split the entire player base. I ended up playing WoW with my close friends for years and while I remember enjoying WoW, I can't recall many memories from it like I did in EQ1. I might just have my Rose tinted glasses on, but it was a huge part of my gaming life.

Heya, one of the EQ2 Trailblazers here. I've been playing the game since its early days and oh boy was it a whole lot of joy. The major problems you discuss here (namely shop) weren't even a thing then - the system was Pay to Play (P2P) and everyone was having the world of it. Each zone had its own que of music, the player base was vast and it even had some punches to exchange with WoW. But, unfortunately, SOE completely numbed the balance and their power creep issue, which lead to the game's slow and steady death. The F2p and shop were introduced years later - just to try to get new people on board, but the game was at its inevitable death state anyways. I could go on for hours why the game worked back in the days and way it was a whole fairytale of experience, but trust me on this one - it was fun and worth the investment. But up to a point. Also, this is subjective, but raids complexity was cool, but probably was one of the main reasons why the game died (high entry ceiling).

Love the video, and as a fellow swashbuckling froglock, I respect your choice in Character creation. A few side notes, Griffin flight was sooo cool when they added it, not all zones had a loading screen when flying by so you get that sweeping landscape as you ride, some of the paths had swooping animations and went through different landmarks, it was fun to not have to run everywhere. Secondly, I always liked the difficulty, from tutorial island there are a few harder bosses I could solo if I wanted(That damned shark off the coast did kill me a few times), and even in the later dungeons/instanced zones they scaled to whether you were in a party or not. Granted, I played with my father when I was a teenager, but I would like to think I'd be better at playing now than then, plus he had a guild to run, was triboxing at some points, and I'd be off doing my own thing.

My entire guild from EverQuest 1 jumped ship to play this stupid game. You needed a NASA computer to run it. I was using a toaster. SO I went to WoW instead. Did give it a try years later, with a better PC. It has some fun points, but after Daybreak took over it just got worse and worse.

I played EQII from launch until about 2010. I loved my time on there. It was more than a game, it was a social experience. I made so many friends and we spent hours slowly slogging through instances and camping mobs. I tried everything I could from just spending an entire day expoloring maps, to crafting, to dungeon crawling, and even did raiding in a top guild. I loved my time on there, and really felt passion from the devs. So many quest lines, so much lore, the details in the different areas (I miss you Nektropos castle). And of course the music was stellar. I watched the game transform from a social experience where finding a group and spending the entire night with them on vent was the norm turn into a WoW clone with dungeon finder. That's why I quit. But I do from time to time think back fondly on the years I spent in Norrath. (funny easter egg. The main "good" city, Qeynos is "Sony EQ" backwards)

Love the game, I left EQ1 when this released to have an amazing experience. I wouldnt go by Steam numbers, I use the original launchers. ALSO, my OCD is flipping out that you didnt harvest any of the SHINIES!

Everquest was the very first MMO I ever played when I was 11 with Shadow of Luclin. I remember my first character, it was a human magician named Rayor and then I discovered the Vah Shir and made a warrior. God those days I longed for in my MMOs when you actually had to talk to people, ask a druid or Beastlord for the SOW buff every chance you got, and just overall a positive experience in terms of actual gaming community...some days those days would come back a little...

Oh man, I played this hard when it launched. The EQ2 website used to keep a kind of leaderboard/progression tracking, so you could pull up your character profile. When I hit 50 (initial level cap), it said I was the 4th one to hit max on my server for my class. After that, with like no initial raid content, I ended up jumping ship to WoW, which my wife had started playing. Have some fond memories running guildies through fabled item quests like jboots, but don't remember much beyond that anymore.

I actually use to be one of the Guides in EQ2. It was a ton of fun hosting role playing events on a non-role play server. People really got into it because of the prizes you could get from it. I -really- miss those days. I'm still salty about EQ Next not being released, and Landmark being taken down even though they said they wouldn't do that.

Loved EQ2 back in the day - still has my favorite housing system of any MMO - especially when combined with the woodworking profession. Had a blast with a gnome illusionist. Was so bummed when it got absolutely spanked by WoW. Would love to find a current MMO with a similar housing system. Fun fact I'm pretty sure this is the game that blew the power supply in my first ever "gaming" computer that I built :D Never mix a pentium 4 and a cheap PSU haha.

i love the ffxiv loading screens because you get vast scenes of the area you are entering or loading into when you get a loading screen. like seeing an aerial view of one of the main cities in the endwalker dlc, or a nice cinematic shot of an area in a dungeon or something.

I miss this feeling of those early 2000s games. Being young and having a bunch of time to explore this virtual world in a genre that was relatively young. You could tell they put in more gamedev effort back then, good times.

This video makes me sad. There seems to be a very fun game here, but one that never got the chance to really shine. That, and the fact that the social part of MMO's has kind of died off. I wish I had a chance to experience the older generation of MMORPGs in their prime as I find their slower, more methodical gameplay loops and focus on exploration and social activities enticing.

As soon as his face appeared at 24:02, an ad played starting with an explosion. It was perfect.

It had Christopher Lee in it; it is therefore factually incapable of being the worst. The housing system was also pretty great.

That part where you were talking on Empty/abandoned cities with their own NPCs and stories being forgotten reminds me of Accursed Farms's video on a mapping software that not only preserves old and dead game's maps and cities but also could help them be re-imagined into something new. Fantastic video I believe you'd enjoy it. Plus also he makes a good point on games as as service being basically fraud as the devs/studio can just kill the game by shutting down the servers regardless of how much money you put into it.

I played EQ2 just about every single day from launch in 2004 all the way until about 2016, and maybe like once a year since then. Started playing as a kid, to a teenager, and now an adult. From Grobb server, to Everfrost, and now on Halls of Fate. Still one of the best games I've ever played, never found anything quite like it and I wish I could experience this game from the beginning again and talk to all the friends I made along the way that disappeared over the years. Played just about every single MMO out there, and this and SWG are my absolute favorites.

I remember I tried the game, as I was in beta of warcraft. I got to the city, landed up in the moat, and was swimming around. A fish took offense to that, and attacked me. I jumped out, so did the fish. I ran, the fish followed, and so the chase began. Through several parts of the map, and a full group of enemies, including a fish chasing me. I logged off, and never played it again.

I loved the first Evercrack. Had a blast until some in-game "GM" changed my name IN GAME and told me my name violated their world's "lore". I had a high level monk class named Atomicmental. Dude told me that "atoms" hadn't been discovered yet so he changed my name. 😂😂😂. Needless to say my Evercrack addiction was solved immediately. I tried 2 years later but the magic was long gone.

We were so excited when this came out, thinking it would be EQ but with better graphics. Instead, we got a game that was clunkier and more restrained. The fact that your character SLOWED DOWN when you entered combat to prevent kiting was enough for me.

Totally remember needing a group. They actually had a party combat thing where you could chain skills with other party members to do even more damage. Honestly I remember hating the craft system, and I was too casual for it. I also remember there was a redeemer/betrayer quest so you could switch factions, something you couldn't do in WoW. There was that, but ultimately I gave up and waited for my friends to get bored and move onto something else I'd enjoy.

I just saw your video and the all-time peak went from your 523 to 532. You've literally doubled the 24-hour peak of people playing the Game since may. Not bad.

To be fair the game did succeed for many years. it wasn't until microtransactions were introduced that the playerbase dropped. That was when I quit. I used to raid with a big guild. 12 years of my life and probably a thousand dollars sunk into expansion packs and subscription fees... And I'm not even playing it anymore...

The original 2004 EverQuest II will probably forever remain my most favorite MMO. The gathering, the crafting, the housing, the dungeons and some of the quest chains were just great. Also the graphics; I still have fond memories of the rain setting in while I was outside in Qeynos Province. That was some next level immersion. I could never get into WoW after that.

"A big dose of sword to the face" is my new favorite quote. I will be using this for a fighter or other martial class next character I make for d&d

This brings me memories. I was part of couple different raid guilds and the hours sunk into EQ2 were insane. I started at the time when Lavastrom was the highest level instance. Oh and the grind to get your flying carpet in Sinking Sands. Ooh the memories, still brings me joy.

I played this when it still had people playing it, before it turned free to play and it was really fun then.. It's so sad to see games like these slowly die. I remember it had such fun things to do, there was an in-game card game you could claim free booster packs for every once in a while and if you got lucky with it some card packs had loot cards for goodies in game like mounts and stuff. There were languages to learn for almost every monster race in game so at first you only could see weird symbols if they talked to you but later you could learn their language and understand them. The housing system was amazing, I've seen so many creative things..

Everquest 2 was an awesome game. Played it for years. It had (has?) one of the best player housing systems ever - they kept adding new houses and guild housing and furniture. It was a lot of fun decking your place out and visiting other players homes to see what they had done. There were a few balance issues at launch, and they had to do a rework fairly early on, but the gamme kept a sizable population for years, so I wouldn't call it a failure. It just wasn't WoW - but then, Everquest was never truly king of the hill either: that title always belonged to Lineage.

I grew up playing EQ, and even went back and played EQ: P99 for over a year. Got a 60 shaman with full raid gear, joined a raiding guild and made a bunch of friends. What's still awesome about EQ is that you need to make friends and work together to be successful. This forces an actual community to grow. Almost every class provides something other classes can't do. Shaman's slow, which is mission critical for many many raid encounters. Clerics can res you so you can pop back into the fight if you die without losing like 12 hours of exp. Druids and wizards can port, several classes can SOW which is a movement speed buff, warriors are critical tanks that get a huge damage reduction at lvl 60, making everyone's life easier. Enchanters, probably the most interesting class in the game can "mez" or mesmerize creatures temporarily taking them out of the fight which is again, critical for many encounters. (looking at you bird island in plane of sky) as well as being the only class that can cast Clarity, which is a mana point regen buff. If you play the right class you can even make a ton of money providing these services to the public. Clerics make absolute bank resing people, druids and wizards charge per teleport etc. EQ solo is a miserable game and you simply can't do most of the fun stuff so you end up making buddies to tackle the tougher content. No other MMO I've ever played works like that. It also takes forever to get a max level character with good gear, so getting that epic weapon actually feels like an accomplishment and becomes a status symbol of sorts. It's awesome to see a max level character kitted out in all the top gear. You can look at a toon and know that countless hours were spend achieving dozens of goals in order for him to get all that swag. At least in P99. The Daybreak version has a system where you can just buy a token that sells for a ton of money. P99 doesn't have any cash shop or P2W elements whatsoever, you gotta work for everything you get. It took me a lil over a YEAR to get my max level full raid gear shaman, and he still doesn't have every BiS item. There were still numerous lil upgrades I could have gone for but p99 kinda runs out of content and the end game can get boring once you've done every raid available to your guild about a dozen or so times. Some of these items are either incredibly expensive or otherwise really really difficult to get. The shaman spell Torpor, runs around 80k, which is an absolutely huge amount of money, or you can grind certain end game mobs and hope the spell drops! Which is what happened to me! It was a day I'll never forget and one of my favorite gaming memories. The group I was with and my entire guild were sending me "congrats!" texts for days as they heard I'd gotten the spell off a drop. There was a huge amount of drama surrounding a bottleneck item I needed for my epic and when I got it I was again swamped with messages from everyone who'd heard the story of the mob that drops the item glitching into the ground and me having to put in a petition and wait for the P99 staff to give me the item I was supposed to get. Compare this to most MMO's where even guild mates barely talk to each other and it's common for a group to run a dungeon without saying a single word to each other.

Everquest 2 was my life from 2008-2012. So many hundreds and hundreds maybe thousands of hours in it. So many good memories.

Played at launch and loved the hardcore grouping nature of the game. The accomplishments felt bigger. After WoW started eating EQ2's lunch, SOE just started copying whatever Blizzard was doing... but obviously not as well. A recipe for disaster. They tried to change, when they should have doubled down.

Well, that was sad. I played it from Release in a succesful raid guild, but somehow I couldnt resist wow pre burning crussade. It just was a masterpiece.

I have to comment on the griffon thing. There are what you are talking about (with the static boring animation). Antonica and Thundering Steppes as well as common lands and most older zones. As far as I am aware, most flight paths do take place in the zone you are in above the land while a few only use a loading screen and only use a loading screen when traveling between zones.

Played EQ2 for years. Raiding was the best part. Every raid target had unique strats and the game allowed for very interesting mechanics. Some of the hard raids were more challenging than anything I’ve ever seen in any mmo… nothing like white-knuckling a 15 minute encounter where even the slightest mishap by any player was detrimental, but getting server and world firsts was so rewarding!

Played the original EQ when I was 14 and it blew my mind. Learning languages, making money by finding people's dead bodies for them using my bard's song, riding on a boat and being terrified of falling off, and swimming in a fountain for hours to level my swimming skill... So many great memories. Wish more MMOs today had so much lore-building and neat little mechanics.

This one is gonna hurt. I by far put the most hours into this mmo and its like home. It just never had the casual appeal of WoW and WoW milked that hard advertising to a much broader audience and nailing it. The graphic requirements made it hard to bring a lot of friends in cause low settings meant pudding face but at the high end it was such a beautiful game. The crafting was deep and had its own storylines and quests and heritage equipment. It was an amazing experience for so many years. The holidays were so unique and fit the universe you could decorate your home and do so much to make this game your home away from the real world. It's a shame to even call the current dumpster fire everquest 2 cause its just a cash grab for the last few years sadly...oof my teenage self is crying over this one... Honestly dont know why they let you start as a new player in the Queens island still. New Halas and TImorous Deep give a much better 1-20 experience than the rest. The goblins are still goblins they just have local names based on tribes... grobin... runnyeye... etc That's a weird example of how the griffons normally work... Usually they travel within a zone but yeah that one is kinda weird... There used to be boats for area changes like that but I guess waiting for boats was deemed too hard so you got a lot of add ins like this to make it simpler to travel directly. If Everyquest 2 had focused on what made it special instead of trying to be mediocre WoW. It would be fine till this day. It had a great population for many years. People were in every zone. People were grouping constantly. They just completely nuked the population in last few years with blatant cash grabs. The fact that you can't steamroll the content on any class is what made it special. You either struggled or you picked a solo friendly class to start. Summoners/tanks/some healers could all do this content no problem. The others required more thought and prep and that was why older mmos were so great. Not everything ironed out for you and when you figured out how to overcome those challenges the rewards were amazing. Last time I seriously played this game was the Race to Trakanon event... no lifed the game for three months with some buddies ... was first healer to 80 on the server our tank was first on server to 80 ... honestly was great nostalgia ... then we discovered they hadn't even bothered to make sure the epic weapons for each class were updated with current stats or any stats in some cases along with most other equipment from raids etc... so the main goal of killing Trakanon was a disaster. Daybreak DOES NOT care anymore skip this game even if you see some glimmer of value in this video it dies quickly I promise. Wow. I never comment on youtube videos but this is getting me so worked up. It was such a good game for many years and I have many many beautiful memories with friends. RIP eq2.

A few things to note. Just about everything in the UI is customizable. You complained about not being able to click and drag icons off of the hotbar. You can fix that in options. That's designed that way at the start so new players don't accidentally remove their skills from the hotbar without knowing how to place it back there. Also the reason for the slow autoattack is because you're supposed to time your skill use in-between auto attacks. In the past we'd figure out the best use of skills to use to maximize dps (around and including the auto attacks). Basically auto attack, hit hotkey 3, 4, 5. Auto attack happens. Hit hotkey 6, 7, 8. Auto attack happens, etc, etc. Skills were varied and would leave dots, debuffs, stuns, etc. So reusing the same skill would usually be less effective than using a different skill. Also, youre swashbuckler has stun and sneak skills to get behind a target to backstab when soloing. I haven't played eq2 in over a decade, but I did play it for 6ish years after also playing eq1 for about 7ish years. Great times and memories, but yeah, I have far more memories about eq1 then I do about eq2.

I was an endgame Raid Assassin for 10 years in EQ2, started at launch in 2004! Best times ever! It went to hell once guild halls destroyed the social aspect of the game imo.

I remember playing this y'know... In the first two weeks. Picking an 'evil' race in the Iksar but being able to do a series of quests to be on the 'good' side always stuck with me, like picking a Tauren but being able to do a quest to play Alliance, I thought it was really cool. Oh also the infamous /pizza emote that was tied in to actually order pizza from Domino's or Pizza Hut via the game so you never, ever have to stop playing 🤣

As a player that spent thousands of hours playing this game and raiding at the top level from launch through to the Shadow Odyssey, while I agree with many things in this video, I do feel that its important to clarify that unlike most subjects of this series, criticising it for the steam concurrent player count is pretty meaningless for this game, much like the steam concurrent count for Runescape is unrepresentative of its true popularity and playerbase (according steam charts, there are currently only around 4000 Runescape players in the world). The vast majority of long term players of EQ2 use the standalone launcher, which is important to note because original accounts, and those that were not created via steam cannot be converted to or used on the steam client. Not sure that I would wholly agree with all the comparisons to WOW towards the end. While its certainly true that WOW did attract a large percentage of players that might otherwise have played EQ2, I think its important to note that there were many factors that went into this, such as the vastly lower system requirements to even run the game at the time which was a huge barrier to entry for EQ2. At launch the game quite literally had graphics settings labelled to only use them at your own risk as current tech was incapable of running them without massive overclocks or very expensive early iteration SLi GFX builds, and the game was also horribly optimised on top of this and would bring even a relatively high end PC to its knees on anything more than minimum graphics. What WOW did an incredibly good job of, was identifying and then appealing to the lowest common denominator when it came to repetitive gameplay loops that trigger a positive dopemine response, rather than actually having superior overarching gameplay or storytelling, and spreading that appeal to a wider audience that had not played MMO's before. A very high percentage of people that came from other more complex or involved games that preceded it simply bounced off WOW for being way too simplified and moved on to other things (Out of the dozens of MMOs i have played over the years, WOW still holds the impressive distinction of being the single only MMO i couldn't force myself to keep playing long enough to at least get a character to level cap and try the endgame). Certainly very interesting to see that content wise the tutorial boat and island do not appear to have changed at all in any way since 2004, I even remember that first boss fight being a nightmare for anyone trying it solo. First divergence from the original experience seems to be when you arrive in Qeynos. That city used to have NPC voice acting all over that now seems to be disabled. For example, any original player will shudder at the memory of Nathan constantly asking "Have you seen a Gnoll before?" when a player entered his proximity. Such a huge shame to see all the DB coin "convenience" monetization that has been jammed into the game since SOE sold it off. Looks like it has ruined what was once a fantastic experience. Also, even though its wholly unimportant, the complaint that they gave things different names just because bugged me more than it probably should, the Drakota isn't called a dragon because its not a dragon. Drakota are lesser dragonkin, and are mostly just bipedal drones under the control of a greater dragon. Actual dragons (at least in the Everquest universe) are generally far larger, intelligent, and also always quadrupeds.

Some things from a veteran player, in the order they come up in the video; EQ doesn't need to rename mythical creatures. The thing that attacks you on the boat is called a Drakota and not a Dragon because it IS a Drakota, and a Dragon is a different animal. In fantasy settings some places use dragon like monsters that have two hind legs and wings, like Skyrim for example. In EQ those are Drakotas. Dragons have 4 legs and a set of wings, like say D&D Dragons. It's presumably not self evident enough that you can right click your hotbars to get at all sorts of options. In particular allowing you to click and drag buttons off the hot bar. Or open a new hotbar so you can drag and rearrange them to your liking. Disallowing click and drag is probably default because in combat it's very easy to click and drag an attack and accidentally shuffle your icons and now you have a skill hanging on your cursor. Being able to stealth in the middle of combat is absolutely not a bug. You've just naturally discovered a little bit of being a Rouge 101. Later levels provide easier/faster ways to do this, and its very much intended and allows you to set up high damage attacks that require using from stealth. I have no defense for the micro transactions in the game. I play on TLE and it isn't as egregious as in the video. That's really scummy. Regular subscription gets you 500 DBC free every month and I mostly spend it on cosmetics. Also you are correct, the horrific micro transaction market place was not present at the launch of the game. There is absolutely background music in the Qeynos harbor. That sounds like a local setting. I wouldn't go by the Steam numbers you listed. Those numbers would be only the people using it through steam, or even worse only the free to play players using the steam client. I don't think anyone I play with or have been in guilds with have ever mentioned using the Steam client. Using the games own launchpad is the norm. I have personally seen more than those numbers listed online at one time in one place on my one server. Giving the impression that EQ2 servers are so dead as to a 500 player count at peak is just misinformed. While I can't speak for whatever server you were restricted to on a free account, I wish you would have seen Kaladim at the time of your recording, or Varsoon today. The nitpick on Grobins is overplayed. This time I got no explanation of how grobins are different, but it's also not "EQ has to make everything unique and different'. There are goblins. Regular ass goblins. Everywhere. Griffons; The particular flight you picked on, all fair criticism. The ones that are interzone transport can be boring. Did you use any of the intrazone griffons? Ones that are fast travel within a map? Those ones soar and swoop around the map and buzz past landmarks and show the place off. I am guessing not as you immediately follow that up by going into Antonica, a place with the other kind of Griffon travel and immediately set off running. The zone is rather large and there are griffon stations for traversing large swaths of the land quickly by gliding through the air and seeing the landscape and landmarks and how everything connects, just as you lamented a minute earlier. Criticism on group focus vs solo focus is valid. However I wonder if your solo frustrations are not just you being used to things being easier. I don't know what you're expecting when you go into fights outnumbered. Most of the deaths you show in the video are because you engaged multiple baddies at a time. Earlier you seemed to understand that the game had a color coded system for difficulty. In addition to that each fight is defined as an 'encounter', or to say that enemies might be solo, or act as a group, and each individual encounter is balanced on it's own. So when you fight two forest guardians at a time, of course you're losing, you are fighting two encounters that are each saying to you 'I am balanced to be a fair fight with you one on one'. Fighting two monsters at once when a single one on its own is a fair fight is a losing plan and it seems like you should know this, even just with what you've shown in your video. Remember tutorial island? You had such kind words to say about the tutorial as it taught you to pull creatures back to a safe spot, what you called 'luring'. What happened to this information you clearly learned, processed, and spoke about? I agree with the bad timing argument, that's for certain. But to say WoW just did things better is not something that can be said with such certainty. There are several mechanical things EQ2 does better, or at least in my option. There are still mechanics in modern MMOs that to this day EQ2 does better than they do. Speaking of personal experience in FF14 (GCD's & appearance/glamor system for examples). It's easy to claim WoW was better because it survived longer, but that doesn't actually guarantee quality. VHS beat out Betamax. Apple continues to exist and thrive on branding and market share despite better products existing. Telsa continues to make cars that catch fire for no reason and self drive themselves off roads and still people buy and defend them. WoW beat out SOE in the same vein of popularity.

EQ2 was the first MMO that I lost days/months/years of my life to, and I don't regret it at all. I'd give anything to be able to go back to it's heyday, which for me was from launch to Destiny of Velious or so. I loved the HQ's and being able to show off the rewards in my house. God I miss this game, and reminiscing makes me think about Vanguard: Saga of Heroes too. Vanguard was awesome in it's own right.

"I mean you lasted longer than New World." ....True, but nonetheless savage.

Watching this video is making me sad, I played this game so much when it came out. Had so much fun with the community, started out as a evil character but decided to betray the evil side. The quest to turn side was hard and required alot of rep grinding to make the other side even let me into the city. Did alot of RP so that made it even more fun, trying to convince other good RP players to help me. It was such a fun time, amazing stories from the game and community, its sad to see how it have died.

it's the end of October as I watch this and the window is open. I'm assuming my neighbor just heard me cackle at the reference to Joshua and the Promised Land.

11:25 that is just an isolated portion of the laugh that plays at the end of a CoD Zombies game.

Tried giving EverQuest 1 a go on Steam a couple weeks ago. Had absolutely no clue as to what to do or how to play

Its sad how original MMO's from back in the day used to have a variety of races, like the frogmen or gargoyles from ultima or ogres and trolls...and now its mostly just elves or things that look like elves. Gone are the monsters, replaced almost entirely by hot and sexy badass edgelords and babes...

I played EverQuest 2 from Launch until the Odus expansion. The roleplayers of Antonia Bayle and the roleplay scene were such a fun time in my life and I have so many fond memories of friends I still have today. I raided and achieved my Mythical Epic before finally petering out. I recently came back and had an amazing time exploring again. Also a huge shout-out to Daybreak support who helped me recover my old account in less than a day, amazing customer service. The only reason I ever stopped playing this amazing game was because real life simply wouldn't allow for the time investment. But I wouldnt trade the experiences I had in this game for anything. I know I'm better because of the people I met in EverQuest 2

I actually freed the frogs on our server (Grobb) with my guild Malice long ago in live when it came out. Your guild would receive the only mythical item for that event on the server. Pretty cool.

The skeleton sound is so iconic to me I love the music of everquest 1 and 2. It's a shame that EQ2 is relatively dead. I had so much fun its one of 2 games I've actually gotten into a guild with actually a cool community. Sadly I stopped playing the game around level 42 and when I came back the guild was basically dead after the server merge that removed the PVP server. Great vid so far! (Watching the vid while commenting haha)

There was a lot that was really well done in EQ2. Imagine the old class customizing of early WoW with the complex crafting of early FFXIV plus housing back in 2004! The major factors for EQ2 failing back when it did were the demanding PC requirements pushing people to WoW, the obvious popularity of Warcraft, the difficulty difference between WoW and EQ2, and also just people not wanting to leave EQ1. A lot of the hardcore playerbase from EQ1 was very divided on staying or leaving, breaking many of the top guilds and fracturing the interested playerbase. Since a lot more of the fickle players were the ones who went to EQ2, the shiny land of Azeroth was a pretty easy sell with no death penalty, the mentioned soloability of the game, and what's still just one of the smoothest combat systems out there. The slow death of EQ2 was really showed me the death of the "hardcore" concept of MMO's.

There's a frog who hangs out under a tarp on my porch. I can just tell if he was an intelligent humanoid that he would be super chill. We've shared many a fine evening together.

I love this series, Josh. Please do “Worst MMO ever” for the predecessor to the 2nd most popular MMORPG ever: Final Fantasy XI.

I knew this video was coming some day... this is bringing up a lot of memories. Especially the sound design, since that's been changed the least. I used to play this game with my dad all the time when I was young... and then daybreak acquired it and we both fell off. At least I'll always have those memories of bonding with him, I guess. My favorite class was the beast tamer one, don't quite remember what it was called.

The housing for its time was phenomenal IMO. A very robust furnishing system, plus guild bases. People could do amazing stuff with the housing and it paved the way for some of the better modern housing systems. The crafting was good too. Could have been better, but being more than "Just spam the craft button" was a nice change. I do think removing the interdependence between crafting trades almost completely was a mistake, though it needed some serious toning down from the original incarnation. I did like the multi step process of making the parts before the final product.

That evil laugh at 11:30 is the same evil laugh as is used in Cod Black Ops 1 Zombies.

Everquest 2 was my life. So many great memories

To answer the question "What happened to you Everquest 2" The answer is simply WoW. I played the game when it was new, and honestly it was fantastic, the only problem with it being its performance. The game was optimized for hardware that did not exist yet, with the expectation that processors would keep getting faster. The thing is, at the time EQ2 was released, MMOs (with the exception of Runescape) were aimed at the limited market of people who could afford beefy hardware, a monthly an internet connection, and who were nerdy enough to play games like dungeons and dragons. So EQ2 launched with in-depth and complicated systems and an expansive world, all of a sort that would appeal to people who enjoy the complexity of advanced pen and paper role playing games. A Month later WoW released. And for a year or so everyone playing EQ2 laughed and mocked WoW. WoW didn't really have anything EQ2 didn't have, but EQ2 had a lot of things that WoW did not. How could WoW possibly compete? But what EQ2 players didn't understand, was that WoW wasn't aimed at them. So when it captured a much larger audience of people who hadn't played MMOs before, or could not afford the best hardware it came as something of a surprise. Then the EQ2 developers started trying to make their game more like WoW. Systems were simplified, the game was made more solo friendly and the original target audience began to be alienated. It was a downhill slope from there. Eventually EQ2 became another microtransaction game, with new systems slapped on top of old ones in ways that didn't quite fit. I haven't played the game for a long time now. I loved it for the first few years. But the game I loved doesn't exist any more. This other thing just shares a name and some assets. EDIT: Ok I have finished watching the video now. I have a few more comments: 1) Originally graphon flights were cinematic, the one you tried was added much later after the developers lost all love and passion. 2) EQ2 was the first MMO I played to properly do away with the long wait to regenerate. Your meant to put level appropriate food and drink in your food and drink slots, which will rapidly increase your regeneration rate. 3) The boss in the cave on the tutorial island was meant to teach you to group with other players. It is not meant to be solo able. 4) EQ2 did not fail because it launched at the same time as WoW. I remember when they launched, the MMO communities of the time had much higher expectations of EQ2 and for the first year or so that both games were around WoW seemed to be a loosing prospect. Everyone I knew who played both games seemed to think WoW was going to fail. The problem was just that you needed new hardware to play EQ2, But old hardware would do for WoW. Then WoWs marketing and accessibility to people who hadn't played mmos before caused it to blow up beyond expectations. It didn't really capture the EQ2 target market, it captured a new and bigger one. Where EQ2 faltered was in attempting to change and be more like WoW. It succeed by the standards of proceeding MMOs. But WoW showed that far grater success was possible. So SoE tried to reshape EQ2 to go for the same demographic. It took the knife to many of its systems and simplified and streamlined things. In doing so it lost a lot of its appeal to the old school MMO gamers, but failed to capture the new demographic, because while it became more like WoW, its hardware requirements were still too high, and WoW was always going to be more like WoW then anything that wasn't WoW. At this point EQ2 had lost the qualities that made it more enjoyable to play then WoW, but A bunch of your friends who couldn't play EQ2 were playing WoW, so you might as well switch your sub over to WoW instead. That was where EQ2 failed. Not at launch, but afterwoods when it tried to become something it was not originally designed to be.

I would have named your character "Hoppy McHopster Jr.". His father was the highest jumper in the village but he was killed by jumping too high. Now Hoppy is going to avenge his father by jumping even higher and surviving.

Hi, just found your channel and this series and am loving it eventhough I'm not into MMORPGs. You keep me captivated by your good tone and delivery, you could be a good narrator/story teller, cheers.

I was a huge EverQuest fan after it came out in 1999 and into the early 2000s. I had to stop playing after Shadows of Luclin was released in 2001, due to (a) the system requirements being bumped up, and my PC couldn't handle a lot going on in-game at the same time; and (b) I started college and lived on campus, and so had to deal with firewalls and throttling, so lag was insane. I returned with the first Progression Servers, just a couple years later, and played it a ton then, too. EverQuest was my first MMORPG, and it was a beautiful experience for its time. Sure, some of the game mechanics didn't age very well, and some of the design choices related to the inferior technology (particularly Internet/bandwidth issues) are obnoxious to deal with today. But... it was a great game for its time. Later expansions really took away much of the spirit of EverQuest, though. Some of that is to be expected, as we're two decades into the game, and countless writers and developers have come and gone. The UI is garbage by 2022 standards. The graphic changes and character model updates look so strange and alien in today's gaming landscape. But... the classic EverQuest experience of Project 1999 and the PoP EQ experience of the TAKP (Mac EQ) emulated servers are quite brillian. And I'm grateful for all of the developers and testers who put in work to keep the game alive. NOW... EverQuest 2, on the other hand, never captivated me in the same way that EverQuest did. The lore and zone changes were obnoxious. I hated some of the race and class changes. The graphics lost a lot of the charm of the original (classic era) graphics. The new character models were largely without charm. And the game felt, well, clunky. And it never really got its feet under itself. The EQ to EQ2 thing taught me a few things about game design for sequels. If you're going to create a sequel, be very careful about lore and character model design changes. If you're going to change too much, just create a new IP. Don't try to create an entirely new experience but using the place and race names of the original game. Like Kelethin in EQ2 is a dumpster compared to have magical Kelethin felt in EQ1. I suspect EQ Next or Landmark or whatever would have been just as alienating. "EverQuest" and "Norrath" will always be what I experienced in EQ1 to me. I mostly just ignore EQ2's existence. It's easy, I've been doing it for 15 years. But cheers to another Josh for giving it a go for us all.

Oh man that skeleton laugh was like a nostalgia punch to the face. It's the same laugh from the original EQ, and every skeleton used it. Both enemy AND player Necromancer pet skeles!