A local area friend of mine started out as a beta tester for EQ2 and became frustrated and bored with it and allowed me to continue in his place and while the game has many "beautiful" graphical elements far surpassing anything else, it's the skeleton of the game I must now tell you about.
If you are a die-hard group oriented type player you will most likely enjoy EQ2.
If you are die-hard solo oriented type player you will not enjoy EQ2.
The content is so group oriented that on some of your core quests (to continue to level) "requires" a group. This is the bad part about the game as a whole.
If you are a duo (husband and wife team like), you are going to run into the same problems, you won't even be able to kill the quest mob as a duo, you need that 3rd person. This is a very sad part of the game and for many working class adults.
The mobs are setup mostly for 3+ players, 6 being the optimum choice with one archetype of each catagory, healer, scout, mage, warror, the other two can be anything really, scout this time around being most important because they are the ones that create the bonus specials to combat.
Mostly through my beta play I researched and tested the solo content (that I could find) and while early on there seemed to be viable content in open areas and dungeons alike, the recent last patch has now taken away ALL dungeon content for soloists. Thus the soloist is reduced to yard trash mobs, with little or no loot and never any decent loot at all and the slowest experience grind around.
It appears as if SOE has misled us, while not misleading us, they love to use play on words like "You can solo to 50", yep, you can solo to 50, but, you will pay "hell" doing so. You will find yourself frustrated and unrewarded for your play other than experience which is about 1/3rd (if that much) that of what groups get per kill. You will be reduced to buying all of your gear from crafters or other players, and never feel any satisfaction of a reward for all your work. This is not good for those who enjoy soloing.
There is no twinking, other than you can hand down level restricted equipment to your alts or someone lower, but, you will never see the likes of a level one in level 50 gear anymore or even level 10 gear, there is basically no powerLEVELING since all encounters are locked and outside buffings or heals or special spells by other players have no affect. Once you are in a locked encounter, you are own your own, whether grouped or solo, that's all the power you're going to ever get. So those expecting their buddies to powerlevel them up in EQ2, you had better start looking for another game. It's gone.
The grouping levels are about the same as EQlive, starting out you can group with people about 4 levels higher than you and it scales up as you gain levels at about a 75% range. You can be 75% of another persons level and still group with them.
I pity some of you on launch day, be prepared to be bombarded by "group" requests relentlessly. Even in beta, there are just too many "children" playing it. Be prepared for the vulgar mouthed, smack talking, rude, crude, and socially unacceptable causing ruin to your gaming pleasure and groups. Because now when ONE person dies, the WHOLE GROUP pays for it, 1/6th of your experience is zappoed, everytime some idiot or fool does something stupid. And you know kids, they love to do stupid things and cause frustration.
The game is being launched about 60% complete if that, it's not exactly ready, but, it's ready sort of thing. It's ready enough that it will probably have the same kind of launch day and days and weeks ahead as any other. Expect long downtimes for emergency patches and possibly to not even be able to login at all that first day. Expect quests to be broken. Expect crashes to desktop. Actually just expect the norm, cause that's just how they do these games nowadays, there's not a one that doesn't have bugs/flaws gaming issues and incomplete programming when released. You can buy it or not, that's your choice, just expect to have some rough and rocky rides along the way.
If I were group oriented I would probably enjoy the ride of EQ2, but, I am predominantly a soloist and when I beta test that is what I look for in them, how much do they offer a casual player with little time to play 1 to 3 hours a day if that. Not all casual players are soloist, but, many are forced to solo in these games due to time factors. And when it takes hours to find a group or someone that will have you, you just don't get your moneys worth out of the game.
Duo's might do a little better if you are willing to pick up a 3rd, one extra is not as bad as 4 extra, because the more you have in your group, the more chance you have of gaining that idiot or fool I spoke of before.
My review here is focused on how I play and what I look for, of course I cannot descibe every little detail about EQ2, I have descibed and reviewed what I felt important to deliver to the rest of the uninformed out there that might be thinking about buying this game for the same reason I 'thought' about buying it, but, will no longer be doing so. I hope it was helpful.
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