EQ 'Shadow of Luclin' -- Pretty Graphics, Ugly Release

ajs writes: "EverQuest isn't a book or a movie, but a work of fiction that's kept a 400,000 member audience enthralled for months is worth a closer look. The most recent update to EverQuest, Shadows of Luclin, is out and of course much of the subscriber base is flocking to be the first to kill the big bad ... whatevers that lurk in the long-lost moon of Norrath. My review touches more on the release than the software, since I think that's what's truely interesting about this industry right now. But to sum up: if you play EverQuest, wait a few days or weeks and then give this a spin ... it's a ride." Read on for the rest of his account.

For starters, everyone reading this should understand that persistant gaming of various forms is here to stay. EverQuest will likely be around for at least a few more years, and its successors will probably take over the gaming industry for several reasons: first, they offer a different and more lucrative revenue model; second, they offer some intriguing secondary revenue possibilities; oh, and third, there are the players who actually seem to enjoy adding more social elements to their gaming ;-)

EverQuest has been a rocky road since day one because the people developing it have never truly understood their market (this can be evidenced by how many customer service policies have been reversed over time). Now, on the eve of their most hyped release, they have done the unthinkable: They released a product which has substantial crash-to-desktop bugs and made the update process so painful as to be impossible for many players. Now, with Quake you'd say "that's awful, but they'll fix the bugs and players of the old version will be fine for now". With EverQuest, everyone gets patched at the same time, and no one can play until it's done and works.

To give some examples: every player is now required to run Microsoft's DirectX8; Minimum memory and processor specs have gone up, and if you dare to run the new expansion you will have to have at least 256MB of RAM just for the core functionality (they provide a way to back out most of the new UI stuff for those who have 128MB of RAM, but I'm told its almost unplayable); 512MB of RAM is suggested!

Ok, so what was the first day like? Well, the servers were down for most of the day, when they were supposed to just be down for a night. Then, when they came up, it seems that Sony did not provide enough network bandwidth for the patching storm that ensued, so no one could patch (and thus, no one could play) until a crittical mass of players gave up and went to bed.

Worse, the patching program was intolerant of the network failures and would leave droppings that would prevent subsequent attempts to patch. I required 2 reboots, 5 file deletions and 2.5 hours to finally patch and run.

"So, how is it?!" you ask? Well, it's a whole lot better than it was, but it's really still not there yet. The graphics are actually disorienting because of their quality and the new hardware T&L acceleration from DX8. Turning around makes you feel like you live in the land of smooth scroll. The facial feature selection for humans is very nice, but for the Iksar (the lizard race), it's rather sketchy, and not much different from before. Horses are cheaper than some had suggested (8,000 platinum minimun). New models for summoned pets and other character-related models like "wolf form" are very slick. The new zones seem to stress their size quite a lot (it's hard to accept that humans would build on such a scale).

I've yet to see the new race, as I assumed that everyone would be starting those characters and the server would be quite slow in those zones.

There are some problems, though, and I think Verant should have held off on the release until they were finished. First is the much anticipated Bazaar zone, where players will be able to become merchants (to some degree which is not yet clear) and sell their goods automatically. This functionallity is off, and still being worked on.

Second, there appear to be a number of bugs. Teleportation while in the new zones was supposed to take characters to a central zone ("The Nexus") from which they could then teleport to their destination. (Currently, that's not the way it works: 10-20 seconds after teleporting, everyone in our party except for the person who teleported crashed to the desktop with no warning!)

There are some problems with spells. Someone pointed out to me that low-level wizard spells do not animate at all, so its hard to tell that your wizard is actually doing anything in a fight.

Overall, I'm going to give this release a 4 on a scale of 1 to 10. It's pretty and in a month, it will likely be the best MMORPG on the market, but again -- it's just not there yet. This release hurt a lot of players who didn't even want to buy the expansion yet.

Some key resources for those who are trying out Luclin are:

• The zone connection map on eqatlas.com.
• Also, Allakhazam is adding items and quests as fast as possible to keep up.
• Expect lots of news on Everlore and the Everquest Realm on castersrealm.com.

Enjoy!"

MUDs will live forever

Interesting to note...
The thing that makes these games so popular and addictive is the human interaction element, not the graphics, the plot, or the monsters. I remember playing MUDs in high school that people were just as devoted to as EQ.

So by that reasoning, the true key to a successful multiplayer RPG would be improving and rewarding actual role-playing and character interaction.

Re:MUDs will live forever

The thing that makes these games so popular and addictive is the human interaction element

Nah, the addictive thing there is the notion of "points", which represent a goal that is easily optimized for. In EverQuest and various muds, the points are "pieces of equipment" or stats or something similar. Your brain likes optimizing for clear goals. Which is why you karma whore on /. Human interaction merely means it takes a little longer to get over your addiction... you excuse mechanisms for not quitting (I have friends there...) are stronger.

--LP ;)

Re:MUDs will live forever

Actually in a weird way this keeps me away from everquest. From what I've heard, without a making friends and building relationships you'll never be in a party that can do the advanced stuff. But the amount of time you have to devote to the game in order to build such relationships would have a negative effect on my social life in the real world.

In other words, you can't just pick it up and play every once in a while because you will lose the social aspect of the game, which is necissary for success. Unfortuantly, I only have time to play every once in a while so it'll never be really fun for me.

Guess I'll wait..

Ugh, how could they do this? I played EQ on and off for two years and had planned to go back for another around for SoL, and from the sounds of things it's a total disaster. Well I can wait for now and tool around with my Shadowblade in Dark Age of Camelot for now. SoL sounded like it had such potential though...

Fair, but it's getting better

I've not got the luclin expansion yet but many of the problems introduced were there even with the old version.

The article is fair, but the expansion had only been out for 36 hours when it was written and already they have had one patch which has cured many of the worst software problems, and are promising more to come in the next few days.

I have every confidence that this will be a great game by the end of the week and everyone has forgotten about the launch problems.

As for the requirements, they are high, but that most people who buy a new computer now will get one that easily meets them. And they have to target the game at people who are likely to be buying it soon, not at those who last upgraded their PC 2 years ago. I'd rather they pushed the spec and made a nicer game than just went for the lowest common denominator and lose out to other games.

The worst problem I've got is that the expansion is not yet available in the UK!!!

But if you've not played everquest I have to recommend it to you. Yes there are some problems with this update but they'll all be sorted out in the next week or so and it will continue to be the best game around at the moment.

Major Bugs

One of the major issues is that under windows XP and windows 2000 there is a major memory leak. After 2-3 minutes of playing on a machine with 512MB of ram I crawl to a 1fps grind before finally just having the machine reboot on me.

It's painful.

I've decided just to hunt in the empty Zones and wait a month before doing any serious Moon hopping.

Enjoy the game everyone, it's pretty. (buggy =)

Check out the Buggy Naked Pictures from the expansion [ezboard.com]. I guess someone didn't have all the files downloaded or DX wasn't loading properly. Makes for interesting grouping... Later, Binestar

128 MB is ok!

I have P3-500MHz 128MB RAM TNT2 Ultra
and without the new textures, can play very well thank you.

MMORPGs taking over? I hope not.

"EverQuest will likely be around for at least a few more years, and its successors will probably take over the gaming industry for several reasons... oh, and third, there are the players who actually seem to enjoy adding more social elements to their gaming..."

I certainly hope you're wrong about persistent online gaming taking over the industry. If that's the case, I'm going to hang up the old joystick.

For me, socializing is socializing, gaming is gaming, and rarely the twain shall meet. I play games to enjoy myself and de-stress, and the last thing I really need is to do is log on and transport myself away to a magical faery world where "L0RDBADA$$23" and "SexyBiGrrrl8775" gather in Ye Old Inn and ask "hi how r u r u m or f? lol brb u sux." And then be PKed and have my corpse looted.

I've just never met an online game that I could get into. The plot and roleplaying elements are fine, but nothing I couldn't get from a single-player RPG, in general. And as for human interaction... while I'm sure there are a lot of intelligent players of EQ or UO out there who like to roleplay their characters, somehow I've never met them -- most everyone I've ever met playing either game has been the intellectual equivalent of the goatsex ACs or a deep-sea tube worm. Why would I pay American money to interact with people like that?

Single player games don't have server downtime, cheaters, whiners, politics, or require a credit card to keep playing them. UT bots don't try to crash the server when they start losing, or strip naked looking for cybersex.

I realize, of course, that I've probably just had one too many bad (and maybe even unusual) experiences that have soured me on the whole concept. I understand there are many people who have deeply satisfying and personally fulfilling hours of fun playing persistent MMORPGs. I'm very happy for them, but I prefer my games single-player, offline, and not charging me ten bucks a month for the privilege of continuing to play it.

I hope there are enough gamers out there with a similar outlook to sustain a market for single-player games. Because if persistent online worlds take over, I'm pretty much going back to chess.

Dark Age of Camelot

I've been playing Dark Age of Camelot casually since October. I find it to be much more enjoyable than EverQuest, mainly becuase it is less crowded, and is based upon Arthurian, Celtic, and Norse legends that many people are already familiar with. They are still tweaking the game quite a bit, but it runs fine, unlike the newest EQ expansion. Plus it has a great PvP system in which, rather than people killing mindlessly like in UO, "realms" are pitted against each other. It also seems easier to play causally than EQ.

I recommend this one to anyone fed up with EverCrack or other online games.

Society...

I never ceased to be amazed by the virtual societies that are created in massive online multiplayer games. I used to be an Asheron's Call addict because I fell in love with the idea of being able to adventure across the landscape to far away lands. I didn't really get into the role-playing aspect, but was intrigued by people that would complain about theft, treachery and the multitude of con-artists that sprung-up in game. The sheer fact that these games mirror our own society (with greed, deceipt, etc.) is truly a great technical feat!

Updates

Since I submitted this, there have been several developments:

• It's becoming obvious that a fair number of Win95 users are pissed that the game they bought and ran under Win95 has suddenly stopped working [everlore.com]. Note: this has nothing to do with the fact that the expansion does not run under Win95, but that old, installed versions of EQ were updated (via the patcher) with a game that refuses to run under 95!
• Verant has been BUSY! There is now a patch for some of the larger problems [castersrealm.com] that people were seeing. I was personally bit by the auto-follow, crash-to-desktop bug several times :-(

This is not a bad release, really. It's just pointing out a lot of the problems that games now face when everyone gets updated/patched at once. The artificial lines between people running "Luclin" and people running "the old EverQuest" are very thin....

subscription software

So basically, what you are saying is that there's a downside to subscription based software when the user has no choice about the upgrade? That the manufacturer of the subscription software can put out a buggy update and force you to take it, which means the software is useless until the fix is in. And you can be forced to upgrade your hardware instead of using existing hardware and existing software.

Hmm. Why does this sound so very familiar.

And you thought there wouldn't be an M$ bashing post under the evercrack story. Shame on you! This is /.

UI MIA

You forgot to mention their new interface is MIA! We are still stuck with the old dated rather poorly designed UI. This was one of my main reasons for purchasing SoL. (now I'm the one SOL)

Turning around?

Turning around makes you feel like you live in the land of smooth scroll.

If you actually turn around, without using your computer's I/O peripherals, you'll get an even smoother scroll...

Blame Verant

Well, after 25 megs. of patches (and EQ telling me I didn't have DX8.1 installed despite it being there) I finally got it running well enough to look around at all the pretty new graphics.

This one falls squarely on Verant for blowing it big time.

Rather than let the release date slip, they shipped a very not-ready-for-primetime product (just in time for the Christmas shopping season!), hoping they could get the bugs fixed in patches before the release date when everyone would find them. They missed.

They also should have never allowed Jeff Butler & friends to do the player wipe on Test Server last year. This cost them a bunch of loyal players who either quit EQ or moved to other servers, myself included. All those players they lost from Test probably could have been very helpful in finding all the bugs they are facing now. You can't do quality testing on a project this ambitious with a small testing group.

The new graphics engine is (currently) way too hardware picky, and that should have been caught months ago. (I downloaded 3 different version of eqgfx_dx8.dll last night off the patch server in under 1 hour. Think someone isn't in Verant's offices furiously trying to get it working?)

Ok a review of the review

I'm really not sure how this 'review' got undeserved space on Slashdot. I presume the subject was interesting, the words sounded appropriate, and voila. Hey, he's flaming Sony Online Entertainment, this must be news! Unfortunately, the reviewer is whiney, inaccurate, and the content of the review is sub par.

First the required version of DirectX is 8.1, not 8 as the reviewer suggets. This is perhaps not a huge point, but it shows that accuracy of this review is not high.

Second, the comments on graphics quality suggest the reviwer never managed to correctly configure his machine. Running on my fairly modest Duron 850 with a Geforce 2mx, I encountered beautifully detailed graphics, and smooth performance. I enjoyed several hours of just running around and looking at things. The new models for all the player races were facinating. The large textures improved the appearance of, well, everything. It was quite an experience to run through West Commons (a classic well known area of Everquest) and see the updated textures on the trees and grass.

The remainder of the review is primarly a bunch of first-impression complaints that are not particularly accurate, well supported, or meaningful to non Everquest players.

The only real value in this report is the comments that:
- The quality of the release is not high (many bugs that prevent people from playing a game they have purchased)
- When initially released, Sony was not able to handle the 'patch' load and as a result no one was able to play

Everything else is fluff.

If you're interested in seeing some pictures of Luclin graphics, there is a nice collection at Gamespot. The release graphics are actually higher quality than those featured here. One of the reasons I find so much value in this release is these wonderful new graphics.

http://gamespot.com/gamespot/filters/products/sc re ens/0,11105,477597-177,00.html

A Real Review?

I think this review could have focused on the actual upgrade process more. This is Eq's third major upgrade, and as far as that, they should have learned a few lessons along the way.

The upgrade this time came in two forms: the revamping of the game engine, and the addition of SoL zones.

The SoL zone addition was quick, easy. That they learned with the two previous expansions (kunark and velious). You stamp the zone files onto CD (three this time) and the users install and register. Voila, new zones.

The real news this time was the game engine upgrade. They moved everything to a new engine, with lots of new XML functionality, which in turn requires a lot more hardware to play. And there's the real story, if this is a "news for nerds" story at all... How do you take an existing game, with hundreds of thousands of people in it, and upgrade its engine? What can you force people to do in terms of a hardware upgrade? More ram? More HD space? Better video card?

Remember, we're talking about subrscribers here - people that pay Sony every month so they can play Eq. At what point is it ok to say "If you don't meet X hardware standard, you can't play."?

In this case, Sony raised the bar rather high. Minimum is now 128mb of ram, a Nvidia Geforce card, and I think around a 500mhz processor. Quite a bit steep for a game I was able to play with a K6-2 233, Voodoo 3 2000, and 64mb of RAM. And that's now minimum specs.

Let's face it - in a few months the bugs in the interface, the "features" they were supposed to add that didn't make it, and the "memory leaks" will be forgotten. What won't be are the people who were paying to play, up until Sony said they had to upgrade past what they were willing or able to afford. And there will be a lot of those cases.

Those of us lucky enough to have the hardware to play it (I play on a tbird 900, Geforce 2gts 32, 512mb ram) will get to enjoy all the new features - I've been playing it steadily and have had few problems yet. But for those who don't... well, it seems Sony is saying "Tough Luck".

Kraegar

Thanks for the review...

...and so long to the fishes.

I'm glad to read that this release is not so great. Why? Not because I work for the competition, but because Verant literally kicked me out after wrongly claiming that I was "cheating." Class action law suit anyone? I heard that I am not the only one in that boat.

I have been with the system since the beginning. I went thru their buggy eervers, buggy releases, awfull support, you name it. You have it. It appears that they made their decision when some sysop was logged in (which is something exceptional as they usually are not here when you need them, like when all your objects disappear because of long lasting bugs.) So the guy sent me a message to verify if I was in front of my machine while I was feeding the cat or on the johns. And since I didn't reply right away. The next thing I got was a mail to get lost. No proof of what they were claiming is shown, unless they scanned my machine and they would have find nothing wrong.What followed was a message exchange (think replies one week after my original message), ending to nothing, nada, zip!

Verant is the Sirius Cybertronics company as Douglas Adams defines it in the HGTTG book. A company whose complain department covers the landmasses of the 3 first planet in whatever solar system. A company so badly managed that the bulletin board needs to be censored by customers of them who can't get their hw working, connection to their servers, drops, items lost, crashes bugs. Remember their intent for scanning software on your PC. You should have read the BB.
That was fun!

I won't be able to get my character back, neither pay their subscription every month. In one way, I should tell them thank you for curing me from this habit of login and meeting friends from all around the world I was talking to every night.

Hi guys! If you wonder where I have been, you know now. My ultimate request to Verant was to be able to log one last time (even if they judged me guilty for something I didn't do) and let the people I had fun with daily online know that I wouldn't come back. I have still to read a reply from Verant support. It's been 3 weeks now...

PPA

This release was shameful

Verant well and truly screwed up this release. Until last week their EQ client was a solid if workmanlike piece of software. In that space of time, it has turned into a bug infested piece of crap, with glitches, crashes, and frequent downtime.

And you don't escape any of this if you don't upgrade to Luclin. No, EVERYONE is suffering this. Worse yet, EVERYONE has been forced onto DirectX 8.1, despite this breaking the system requirments pledge that it runs on Windows 95.

There are a lot of shills on the usenet groups who are bleating that if you don't like it you should go elsewhere. What they don't realise is most people EQ the game, but think the administration of EQ stinks to high heaven. The amount of downtime is totally unacceptable. If Verant ran a proper ship it wouldn't nearly half as much and fiascos like this and last week could have been avoided.

EQ Nude Mode! Best client side bug yet!

Best bug found so far - it seems all the new textures and models for clothing and armour are occasionally not being drawn. It is not known yet if this is the fabled "bonus" for signing up for the game early.

Boy those skinners really need to get out more.

On the bright side, if it's a bug, surely you could duplicate it with a simple client side memory resident program.

And, of course, once you have written said program,you could sell it on Ebay for only $139.99 and make yourself rich from 13 year old boys.

Topless Female Elven Paladin [earthlink.net]

Topless Female Barbarian Shaman [earthlink.net]

Naked Female Half Elf Warrior From Rear [tkagiro.com] and Front [tkagiro.com]

Naked Male Elven caster with carefully placed spellbook [tkagiro.com]