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KaL
04-11-2003, 04:36 PM
Anyone got an "in" on the dev team? As in, anyone got any insider information, or, god forbid, know anything directly about EQ2 because you're sleeping with someone on the dev team?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Not about the sleeping thing, eww.

RavenCT
04-28-2003, 07:14 PM
Supposedly I head that they (SoE) was going to offer the beta to some of the EQ community that has been around/playing the longest..

I don't know if that's true, but as I've been in the game since 1999, I might get a notice of so...

Who the hell knows, someone may just be blowing smoke :p

preman
05-02-2003, 01:58 PM
This is taken from the FAQ of http://everquest2.station.sony.com/faq.jsp

How do I become a beta tester?
Information regarding the EverQuest II beta test will be made available on the official website. However, it is important to note that many of our Legends subscribers will be the first to experience EverQuest II in its beta. We will be giving preference to longtime Legends Subscribers, so our suggestion is that if you're interested in EverQuest Legends, sign up now. After Legends players, longtime EQ subscribers will be eligible for a phase of the beta as well. We realize this information is somewhat vague, and the only reason for that is we don't have an exact date yet.

This should come as no surprise to anyone that SOE will give first option to Legends accounts that pay over $50 versus long standing standard accounts.
Money counts more than customer loyalty, seems common place with these people. Note the "sign up now" catch phrase ;)

KaL
09-06-2004, 01:19 PM
Just got my beta invite recently. So, anyone been working on showeq2?

Reichfuhrer
10-06-2004, 02:18 PM
I doubt we'll see any work on SEQ2 before the game is released. I'll be interested to hear if SOE has any tricks up their sleeve to thwart SEQ2. I kind of doubt it, but you never know.

BlueAdept
10-06-2004, 05:38 PM
I got in, but I dont think it is worth even looking into it. EQ2 was a big disappointment to me.

Im pretty sure that they have learned their lesson from EQ. They probably only show a radius of mobs around you just like DAOC (does anyone still play that game?).

SeqTester
10-06-2004, 08:03 PM
I also did not like EQ 2, I have been on the beta for a month or 2 now and only play a bit being I am usually playing on live servers so I don't get far behind my guild.

I actually liked it alot when I 1st got on and there was hardly anyone in the zones. Now it's just a lagfest and not really worth trying if you ask me. :eek:

EQ2 is all about EyeCandy, my 5950Ultra loved it. ;)

ST

Freakyuno
10-07-2004, 07:04 AM
From minor analysis of the packet stream during an EQ2 session, it is looking ALOT like the stream from SWG, which indeed only shows a radius of mobs / static intractable items / players.

More details later, but don’t hold your breath, doesn’t look promising

cmore
10-18-2004, 02:42 PM
I haven't decided whether I'll stick with EQ2 or not. The beta hasn't settled me yet - I'll have to see the 'upper end' game to know.

I was hoping for a SEQ2, but given the limited radius it sounds like they'll use, it sounds unlikely. This leaves me without the superb spawn/tracking available in SEQ. While it's really handy, I do very little tradeskilling or 'exploring' in EQ1. It's most important to have SEQ to learn new camps/zones and such. After that, I get along fairly well without it. EQ2 is a different matter.

In EQ2 there are two aspects to levelling quickly, that aren't inherent with just playing well (combos is where the DPS is at, even for soloing). The first is Where/What to Kill (not likely to happen), and the second is Quests, of which there seem to be thousands.

Where/What to kill is something I am used to learning over time. No big deal. No tracking sucks, but maps and locations of named mobs, places, and NPCs would be handy.

The Quests are another matter. I hate memorizing the location of all the people I have to talk to for quests. Maps and locations of NPCs/Places would be handy for this also.

The other thing I hate is general locations. I have no idea where 'Allustrous Tubs of the Milk-Goat Tavern' is, especially when the silly tavern isn't really a tavern at all and has no sign. Not sure what I'll do on this one.

Neither has to be dynamic - meaning that instead of SEQ with 'live' skittles, you could have SEQ with maps, BASIC locs (I hate clutter), with a searchable linked database of NPC/Place locations. Ideally it'd be optionally tied to quests, but since it'd be for camping named mobs also the tie to quests can't define the architecture.

Being unaccustomed to relying on public projects, I started putzing. Then I recalled that the stuff I wrote to parse logs in the past I ended up ditching in favor of SEQ and EQ Companion. End result: I figured I'd post here and see what feedback occurs. It is highly unlikely I'd be able to write a front end or packet sniffer in Linux, and can't write in anything but M$ - yet I like having the sniffer part in linux. I could write log readers/parsers to collect data with though.

I know MS SQL (specialty), FoxPro, a bit of VB, .NET, HTML and whatnot, and Delphi. As for experience with EQ, I wrote a convo extractor and some other misc junk for EQ log files a while back, but they've gone into misuse. My own fault of course, since I was the only user. Guess I just like using code to make things work.

Last night I was getting pissed cause I couldn't remember what or where all these friggin NPCs/Places were I was getting quests for, so I set up three macros in EQ2. 1 = /loc, 2 = /hail, 3 = string marker. I actually have the order reversed, but i'm on satellite so that's the order they happen in (woe is me), so I'll have to write the stripper intelligently to give a 'best guess' when I'm spamming a buncha tightly packed NPCs. I figure I can just round the loc to the nearest 10 feet or so and that should eliminate dupe locs/npcs, but still provide confirmation of locs and wandering paths of NPCs. Obviously, common mobs (non named, non NPC) I'll just have to ignore. Over time, heavy patterns of common mobs I could analyze, and give a general area of a zone that quest-common-mob-kills X were available in.

If it's a solo job in the end, I'll just be stuck with a SQL db, using ISQL to query it with. No need to write a front end if I'm the only user. Tying NPCs to quests seems problematic also, cause I haven't looked into whether any client-side stuff (short of packet sniffing) tells me when NPC X gives me a quest, or the name of the quest itself. The quest name would be needed to look it up later, unless there was a way to grab it from the client. Hrm. I'll have to do a /find when I get home and see if the quest names are stored somewhere on the client side. that'd be neat. Then all I'd have to know is when the user clicked on a quest in the UI. But I digress...

I turned log on and have started going through zones as I feel like it and hailing every friggin NPC in it. So far, I just have South Freeport and the Crossroads in Commons, but in due time... I'm thinking of writing a little log xfer app to have my buddies send me their hails/locs from their logs so it's not just me collecting the data.

What this will give me is a searchable DB of NPCs. Perhaps, if I'm lucky, a way to tie NPCs to quests.. who knows. No UI, and probably no automation within a UI.

I suck at C/Linux, and not likely to get much better with a career based in M$ that I dare not deviate from. 16 yr old son, new baby twins, a large house payment, and a large paycheck = don't rock the boat. Oh, and I decided to take full-time college - heh.

Laetos
10-22-2004, 10:27 AM
fyi since the last patch you can ask a Guard where to find a NPC, then again when i started playing i kept hailing the NPCs too just to have them in my log when i need to find someone (:

Foestauf
11-02-2004, 06:10 AM
From what I've noticed it seams that upon zoning you recieve a complete list of npc's/pc's in the zone. Just as in EQ1. This is easily noticeable by going into a zone, going LD, then running around in the zone and watching new spawns appear wherever you go. Wich lots will argue about because the client only renders characters so close to you. So it appears that they just pop onto the screen at a distance.

Freakyuno
11-02-2004, 10:05 AM
What you recieve when you zone in, as far as I can tell is the "static spawn" list. Which is the x, y, and z points at which mobs will spawn given the right criteria is met at the time they are supposed to spawn. When you unplug and run around the zone, you see the product of where all the static spawns are supposed to be, since you are no longer recieving updates from the server denying the spawn.

Once you've zoned in, the packet stream is only showing mobs just outside the rendered radius. It gets a little funky at times, and hard to analyze. My best guess on this is that the server is pre-caching info to you based on a few decision factors, like the direction your headed, the speed your going and pattern of movment over the last 10 seconds or so. At that point it seems to be sending the spawns further ahead of your radius in a specific direction. It's really hard to tell though, and with the rate at which they hotfix the servers and datastreams change, as well as client side lag in some of the more predictable zones, its getting very annoying to even work on.

Lodar
11-05-2004, 10:18 PM
I am in beta.
From what I can see, its like in EQ1. Zone spawns are static. You actually load the spawns in loading screen.

Contrary as SWG, EQ2 got zones... reason of SWG having spawn in area only is I think because it was a 1 zone thing and would be too much NPC at same time. EQ2 is zone built, like EQ1. And so far... beside the wanderers, NPC all spawn at the same spot!

So I would guess we could get something out of it... if they decide to do a showeq2 (fingers crossed)! :D

Lodar